All For One
by Luna Manar
Summary: Facing oneself is not always easy, and sometimes the purest love takes on the form of our darkest nightmares. UNFINISHED
1. Don't Be Afraid

All For One

by Luna Manar

LunaManar@aol.com

I

Don't Be Afraid

_--_

_"Maybe this world is a broken mirror,_

_reality in reverse._

_Maybe it's just a shadow_

_of a parallel universe…"_

_--_

            It was cold and it was wet. Dark, sweaty dampness, nighttime in the underground nation of the world's mightiest nightmare.

            Galbarira. The lone survivor. A champion in a world of tragedies. Home of the rich, the poor. Home to everyone. Even those who despised it. 

            Home to the Pride. Home to the Prey.

            _There she is._

            Eyes trained on the Prey, sized her up, judged her. She was pretty, young, endowed. She wore a dress. There was a man with her. Not tall, not impressive. Her spouse, perhaps? The eyes narrowed, cold and crystalline in the shadow. The man was no threat. Not to the Pride. And _she…_she was perfect for them. 

            The watching blue blinked once, twice, and backed further into the alley. The decision was made. It would be done. He motioned quickly to his next-in-line, who brought up by his side in an instant.

            "Go," was all he said to him. "Make it quick."

            The shadow of his cohort vanished into the blackness, and footsteps could be heard here and there. The Pride's leader, satisfied that his job here was done, turned and melted into the darkness, oblivious to the sudden screams and shouts that lingered behind him.

            Like beasts, they were his monsters. His allies. But he had to keep them fed, had to keep them hungry. Else, they would turn on him. It was the way of things. He led them. He did most of the killing. He let them do their dirty work on the women. That was not his concern. His only responsibility was to find the Prey. Let the beasts have their sex hunts as they would. The Pride's leader did not care.

            If it made them happy, so be it. It meant survival for another day.

            The Pride was possibly the strongest of its kind, the greatest faction in the alleys. No other faction was stronger, smarter, or healthier. The other factions brought down the weak, the sickly. The Pride took the big game—the wealthy, but not too rich—and they flourished. They held up residence in the basement of an abandoned building that had caved in on itself, but their abode was comfortable. They lived as brothers, working together, preying together. 

            He was just their superior.

            He lived on his duty. There was no other job for him. Seek out the Prey. Let the Pride bring them down. Make the final kill when they were done—if it was necessary. It generally wasn't.

            But he enjoyed his job. Killing was far more artful, far less atrocious than rape. No, _that_ was a practice for the shallow, who could not control their own petty desires. It was sick and it was a game he did not play. He preferred killing. Swift kills, savage kills, torturous kills. He knew them all, knew how to kill in every method, knew how to make his prey suffer or how to put them down painlessly. It was his business. As long as there was blood on his hands, he was in good times. It was a living.

            He walked away from this hunt, however; the girl he had chosen for them was very frail-looking, and she was small. He doubted she would survive all of them. There was no need for his presence. 

            A simple curtain acted as door to their home, and he ducked through it and the 4-foot-tall hole in the wall it covered. There was no light inside. He needed none. He knew the place well enough. Three steps inside, and he turned right, ducked again through another flap that protected his room from the outside. 

            In total darkness, he found his bed of hung blankets and an old mattress, and laid down. It had been a tiring night. Three kills, one victim who escaped. The Pride had been unusually voracious today.  

            He turned onto his side. He supposed it did not matter. As long as they came to the den satisfied, there was no problem. Animals. So easy to placate. He closed his eyes, brushed copper-brown hair out of his face and removed his gloves. 

Ice blue gaze hidden beneath heavy lids, he slept.

*

He ate and drank the Prey's blood for breakfast—their blood was silver. Coin silver, hard and cold, the embodiment of survival for he and his Pride. They preyed only on the silver-bloods; lesser factions took the copper-bloods, or sometimes even the cold-blooded, who had no money at all. But the Pride knew better than to prey on the _gold_-blooded: those who reigned within the Law, the bread that the factions broke for a living. It was dangerous to kill a gold-blood. Gold-bloods attracted attention. Any who killed them would be hunted down and arrested, taken to prisons where they would be systematically tortured and killed in far worse fashions than they had ever inflicted on their own victims. 

The factions were merciful compared to the Government. They did their work in private, did not humiliate their victims in front of the public. Most of those who lived in the factions, had a family history with the Government, histories of unspeakable things that had been done to them by the Government, things that had made them come to the factions seeking refuge. 

He straightened the dark brown jacket he always donned before going out—an old, but functional thing, lined at the collar by a white mane of animal fur, that which had earned him the title of _Lion, _and his faction that of _Pride. _No one inside his family—the Pride—called him Lion, however; he disliked the name. Only those from the outside called him that. He didn't care. Let others name him what they wished. It only mattered that his brothers called him by his true name.

"Squall, yer up early."

He half-turned as he was adjusting his belt—he adjusted everything before he went out—to eye his next-in-line impassively. The quip was typical of the man, and not to be taken too seriously. He didn't answer.

The man pressed the one-sided conversation. "It's still light out. Where y'think yer goin'? A single's bar?" Raucous laughter echoed in the den from dozens of throats. 

The Lion finished straightening his white shirt, then turned and backhanded the joker with a vengeful paw, sending the offending jaw reeling and the body into a pile of bent hubcaps. To his credit, the next-in-line, one by the name of Seymour, kept his balance and steadied himself, wiping at his bleeding lip with a rueful leer in the Pride leader's general direction. The den had suddenly gone quiet.

The Lion only scowled back with a dangerous intent, a shadow of his hair gracing his forehead, making him seem that much more menacing in the gas-lamp lighting of _his _underground home. "Better fix that cut before you bleed on somebody," he rumbled tonelessly, a dark sound, like backdraft from an all-consuming fire. Without further comment, he turned and left the den, bound for a destination that it was only his business to know. 

  
* 

The Lion wasn't particularly tall or stocky, hefty or lithe, handsome or ugly. He appeared typical enough to most people; a credit to his ability to roam about on the evening public streets without being noticed as an outsider. He kept himself relatively clean, scentless, and presentable; all things that most faction leaders scorned. It served his purposes. People were not afraid of him when he walked down the street, for he seemed as though he was one of them. Perhaps a little rougher than most, but still acceptable by any public standard. 

He was indeed strong, healthy, about two inches shy of six feet. He was solid and well-muscled, pleasant to look at if one had an appreciation for his kind of appearance. His expression was preoccupied, his gait honest, attitude polite and even courteous. He even had "friends" in this world of relative light; no one could have guessed that he was in fact a predator whose face would be the last thing that some of them would ever see. 

It didn't bother him. Everyone had to die sometime. Even he would, he knew, and someone would replace him as leader of the Pride. He was a known master of killing in his territory. Death was his god. He lived by its creed. It protected him as much as it threatened him. It was the only real law, the only real truth. 

He ignored children who raced past him in play, gave the pretty women he passed not a glance. Like any predator, there were times where he would live amongst his own quarry without the notion of killing, for it was not the foremost thing on his mind, and unimportant to his current goal. He needed a few things: oil for the gas lamps; clean drinking water for the Pride; a new bedding pad would be nice. 

He spent the money as his own, bought the items he and his Pride required, and bid the shopkeeper farewell and good night. The odd thing about it was that his business was honest. The money, he considered to be his own by right of spoils. He honestly hoped each shopkeeper had a good night, although should he meet them in the darkness, he would have no second thoughts about their doom. Such incidents had happened before. Those particular killings were unpleasant for him, but he weathered it, considering it a cost of duty.

How he wished he could have dealt with such unpleasantness tonight.

As night finally blackened the burnt-out cities, the familiar howls and shouts of hunter and victim cried out through the alleys, the Lion and his harmless burden on their solemn way back to the responsibilities of the den, an unusual laughter reached his ears. Well, not all that unusual, but it was a sound that forecast danger in any case. The Lion resolved to move quickly, remain unseen until he had reached the relative safety of the den. 

The Galleon. The only other faction that rivaled the Pride in size and ferocity. They were different from the Pride, though, mortal enemies; the Galleon were arrogant demons of the alleys, pack-runners, wild dogs that laughed and howled their presence to the city when they made a kill. Very unlike the Pride, who went about their business covertly. In some ways, they were more feared than any other faction. The Pride, while just as deadly as the Galleon if not more, did not generally keep their prey alive after it was caught. Victims were systematically brought down, raped, then slaughtered and robbed of all belongings. The Pride did not leave messes. It destroyed the useless bodies. 

The Galleon was different. Even larger than the Pride, if not as well disciplined, the Galleon left remnants of their kills lying about. They kept their prey alive as long as they could still torture them, and then well-ripped the poor creatures apart when they were done. Their laughter inspired fear in all who heard it. Their leader—the Lion's only equal in power—was a heartless, intelligent brute that called himself Sailor. He led the Galleon's loud, disorganized hunts, and participated in the fun once prey was caught.

Squall hated him.

The Lion despised Sailor far more than he despised the Government. Sailor was worse than the Government. Sailor had been in charge of the Galleon since the day the Lion had joined the factions, ten years ago. Both he and Sailor had been fourteen at the time, although Sailor had already been living in the factions for well over five years. At the time, the Pride did not exist. Nor had the Lion. He had been a member of the Galleon, with no title. Just Squall as his identity.

Squall had run with the pack for four years. He'd become next-in-line to Sailor himself, and had frequently challenged Sailor for leadership of the Galleon. He didn't like Sailor. He'd never liked Sailor. Sailor was bigger than Squall, half a head taller and broader. Squall's fights with him had always been futile. He'd never beat Sailor, and never gained leadership of the Galleon. 

But Squall left the Galleon, suffered as an outcast, alone in the alleys. He'd been a "lone wolf"; cast out and doomed to die on his own. It was assumed he'd either starve to death or be killed by one of the factions. 

But he had changed during that time. He'd ceased to be a dog of the Galleon, and had grown, through starvation and misery and loneliness and fear, into his own one-man faction. He'd killed a gold-blood, and never been found. Not even the Galleon had found him for two years after that slaying, although he had continued to kill and plunder. The next time he was seen, he'd been stalking in an alley, reportedly with blood on his lips and a jacket with a white lion-fur collar on his back. Since then, he had become known as the Lion. He'd remained as this silent killer for three years. 

When he finally returned to the open again, he was no longer alone. He had confronted Sailor again that night, in the deepest catacombs of the alleyways. He'd been weathered, hardened by that time.

And as the Galleon had closed in on him for the kill, the Pride had risen up behind him, appeared from the shadows and corners, trapping the whole of Sailor's faction in a narrow corridor that would allow no escape.

Where the Lion had found his Pride, no one was certain. But though the Galleon outnumbered them two to one, the Pride were efficient predators, far more skilled than the dogs under Sailor's reign. They'd each been taught or chosen by the Lion himself, proven their worth to him as fighters and hunters. Hence the war that ensued was devastating, moreso to the Galleon than the Pride. The Pride, then 20-strong, had lost 3 members; the Galleon lost 30. 

The Lion himself had taken Sailor, though the end result of the fight had been a stalemate. His faction drawn and quartered, Sailor escaped the fray with the twelve survivors of the battle, and the Pride had staked its claim on the south alleys.

The Galleon was back, and larger and stronger than ever, but they were still disorganized and impetuous, and the Pride ruled a larger territory. Still, even the Lion knew better than to wander about the area alone when the Galleon's cries could be heard. There were nearly forty in the Pride, over fifty in the Galleon, but the balance of power remained in the Pride's favor. The Galleon was ruthless about their territory; anyone not a member of the Galleon who was found in their alleys was fair game. The Pride were more lenient about such things; smaller factions were allowed to hunt or, sometimes, take up residence, in designated sections of the Pride's territory. However, if other factions broke those boundaries, the Pride was merciless in its retribution. 

And such was Squall's reaction when he found three of the Galleon's dogs harassing a young woman not too far from the Pride's home.

His decision was immediate, his movements were swift and deadly. The things he had bought were set down on the pavement; he stepped into the shadow of a wall; came to within a few feet behind the first intruder; and soundlessly snatched the man back into the darkness, breaking his neck in a instant. The other two had only a chance to see the Lion before he'd maneuvered behind them as well, dispatching one as he had the first, the last with a knife to the small of the back; the Lion heard his victim cry out, then tore upward with the single blade, a movement he'd practiced countless times, cleaving the spine in two halves lengthwise. 

All three men lay on the ground dead. There was little blood, even from the man whose back had been sliced open. The Lion sheathed his unsoiled weapon into his belt, and turned to stare at the girl who now cowered in a corner between a dumpster and the alley wall. 

She seemed unharmed. A pretty girl, probably silver-blood, Squall guessed. What she was doing here was anyone's guess. But though she shied away from him as he approached her, she did not appear particularly afraid. 

He stopped, feet away from her, considering. She was in his territory. By all rights, she belonged to the Pride, now. There was nowhere for her to run. He did not rape people. He should kill her now and be done with it. 

Still, there was the matter of the Galleon dogs being within the Pride's alleys…

"You wanna live?" It was a simple question, one he figured she wouldn't answer.

She surprised him again when she did. "Last time I checked," she murmured, voice shaking, but clear—and utterly disdainful. 

He sneered at her snide remark—who was this girl to speak to him in such a manner? And curious, that she seemed to have no fear of him at all. He leaned closer to her, such that she backed herself more tightly into the corner to avoid touching him. "You know where you are," he growled quietly. "You're better off dead than you were with them. Take the hint."

He backed off, watched her for a split moment, then turned, picked up his groceries and started off toward his den. He listened as he walked. Nothing, nothing, nothing—gravel. 

He stopped, and listened to the footsteps stop behind him. So she was no longer in the corner. His free hand fingered the knife at his belt.

"I was wondering," he heard her call from behind him, "if you knew how I could get out of here…I got chased in here by those thugs."

His shoulders heaved slightly, a brief sigh. "I'm not that much different, lady. Hurry up and get lost, or I'll kill you, too." He said it with honest nonchalance. "You don't belong here."

"I _know _that! And I don't think you'll kill me," she retorted. "You just saved me."

His lip curled. He didn't have time for this. "I killed them because I didn't like them. Now get out," he advised, "before I start disliking _you._" 

"If I try to get out," came the immediate argument, "someone else is going to catch me. They'll have their fun with me and _then _they'll kill me. If you're trying to scare me away, it's not going to work. I'd rather die. You seem pretty good at killing, anyway. At least I know it'll be over quickly. So I guess I don't have much to be afraid of."

The Lion had been about to turn and kill her as he'd warned. He'd been ready to send the knife through her eye and be rid of her bothersome banter. But something stopped him. This talk, this logic coming from the girl…it sounded like something he might have said, himself. Curious, he thought. She was no fool. She knew her situation. She also knew better than to flee in blind panic. But what else could be done with her? Give her to the Pride? No. Their hunt was over for this week; the Lion's rule was that one night each week, the hunt would be on, and even then, he himself would not participate except in the killing. 

She was intelligent, this girl. She deserved a say—whether or not that would affect his decision was questionable, but it could help him.

"If I were to try to kill you now, what would you do?"

"I doubt I could do anything," she spat back. "Like I said—I'd rather die than be screwed over."

"Do you have somewhere to go?"

This caused her pause, as if she hadn't expected him to ask. "…No," she said finally. She didn't elaborate. Nor did she need to.

Again, he put his bought items down, and approached her. She watched him with understandable wariness as he slowly circled her, scrutinizing her from all angles. She was a few inches shorter than him, slim but strong-looking. Her hair was jet-black, though in the darkness, the Lion's sensitive eyes, trained by years of living in the night, could see a slight change of shade near her bangs, which were colored some dark hue—red, violet, blue perhaps. The lighter color, however, was natural, possibly a reddish tinge or caramel streak that was often seen in women of her appearance: narrow, black eyes, a rounded face and pale skin. 

He finished circling her, and stood in front of her again. She stared at him expectantly, seeming to understand the decision he was making: he was no savior of hers. His considerations were not for her health, but for his own. He could decide to give her to the Pride—his faction—he could let her go on her own, or he could kill her. She was an item. In this place, she belonged to him, now. He could see she understood that. If she feared it, she did not show it. 

Just as well. Fear had no use in her situation.

"You're part of the faction that lives here," she observed. "Those men weren't in your faction, were they? That's the real reason you killed them."

"That's right," he answered simply, and continued to evaluate her. He was becoming more and more interested with her by the moment. She was calculating, observing him in return, his actions and reactions, drawing conclusions from what she saw and heard. 

He was considering not killing her.

But letting her go or giving her to the Pride would mean the same outcome. Rape and death. That seemed a waste in this case. He reached out and took her firmly by the chin, turning her head to either side, speaking as he did so. "You want someplace to stay?"

She waited until he was through looking at her, had released her face, to answer. "Will I be safe?"

"I can't promise you'll be safe."

"Will I be killed?"

"No."

"If I said I didn't need your hospitality?"

"Then I kill you." He nodded once, offering her the option: "Either you come with me, or you die now. Just tell me what it's gonna be." It wasn't a threat, or even a warning—it was simply a choice that he presented her. Her decision would determine his next action. If she chose to die, he would kill her and move on, and his conscience would not bother him; it would have been her choice. If she chose to go with him, he would have more thinking to do, but there would be no waste—of that, he would be certain.

"Then…" She hesitated, made herself finish. "I choose to die."

Something in him fell; he'd been half-hoping she wouldn't make that choice. It would have made his life interesting for a few days, at least. But little came of it, and he drew his blade, stepping toward her again. She backed away out of instinct—again understandably—but he caught her by the wrist and slid around her, so that he was holding her prone from behind. She was frozen in his grip. Her eyes closed. She prepared for death.

This was yet again interesting to him. He was used to a struggle. Curiosity tugged at him. If given the option, how would she wish to die? He had time on his hands to experiment, and so offered the choice: "Fast, or slow?" His knife was at her back.

"Ah…" Her eyes opened again, as she visibly fought back her fear, shaking and forcing hard breaths. "As long as it doesn't hurt, I, I think…"

"Death always hurts," said the Lion, gravely.

She was quiet, for a moment he allowed her. Her breathing calmed a little. "Then…through the heart. How's that? Not too slow, or fast…best and worst of both worlds."

Funny. Also something he would have chosen. The tip of his knife pressed against her back.

Again she closed her eyes. Then she did something very strange. She did not struggle, but instead her one free hand reached up to grab hold of his restraining arm across her throat. She clutched his arm tightly, and bowed her head.

"Let go of me," he told her.

She sounded suddenly afraid. "I don't want to die alone. You'll kill me, and then you'll leave me. I'd rather you stayed."

This made little sense to him. 

His confused silence apparently amused her. "What, you've never killed someone and they held onto you while they were dying? Where do you think the term 'death-grip' came from?"

Interesting questions. He couldn't recall. He supposed it didn't matter. This discussion was becoming pointless. He pressed the blade into her back, felt the flesh give way to the steel. The moment the pain registered in her mind, her hold on his arm tightened. He stopped. "Let go of me," he instructed her again.

Her answer was quiet, shaky. "I…I can't. I don't know if I can make myself."

His eyes narrowed. Her reactions interested him more and more. "You want the company of your _killer?"_

"…Who else do I have?" Pain was creeping into her voice. The knife in her back remained still. 

The Lion felt blood trickle over his fingers. The sensation excited him, made his muscles ache to finish the job, thrust the knife into her and let her blood paint his hands while she struggled with her last breaths. Somehow, he found it hard to believe he would find much satisfaction in killing this girl, though. He found her interesting. He wanted to know what she would say next. She answered his questions. Perhaps he should ask more until his curiosity had been appeased. "You feel death?" He lightly pressed the blade a hairsbreadth deeper into her back.

"W-what do you mean?"

"This knife," the Lion rumbled softly, barely tilting the blade as he spoke of it. "You know what it's for. You know what it means. But you're not running, or fighting. You're not paralyzed with fear, either. You ask me to kill you rather than let yourself become prey for the factions." Further he pressed the blade, until it brought a sharp intake of breath from her. But his movements were careful, even gentle. He made certain the knife slid in smoothly, so that she would feel as little pain as possible. He drove deeper, but stopped short of piercing her heart. "You say you don't want to die alone. You'd rather have your killer here with you. So here I am. What do you want?"

Another surprise. He had expected her to tell him she wanted the pain to stop, she wanted him to get it over with, or to let her go. Any of these answers would have earned her the final push on the knife that would send it through her heart. Her answer, instead, saved her life. "I want t-…to know, who you are."

"Why?"

"B, because…" She was fighting to stay calm. "I don't understand. You're giving me a…a, a choice, and…I didn't think…that people in the, the factions…that they were like you. I thought…I thought they were more like those thugs you k…killed. You…you must be…interested in me, otherwise…you would have already killed me. You're…you're a killer, but…you don't want to kill me, I, I don't, think." It began to rain. First softly, then harder. Cold settled in the alley. Time settled with it.

The Lion closed his own eyes. She was a little off. He did want to kill her. He was high off the idea of killing her, wanted to feel her blood flow over his skin. But he didn't want her fear. He didn't want her to struggle or scream. None of these things charmed him as they normally did. He noticed his own quiet, slightly heavy breathing. 

"You're a killer," she repeated, "but somehow…I think you're okay." He heard her swallow thickly. "You're not evil, it's just…your nature."

He could not take any more. With a grunt, he pulled the knife from her back, and let go of her, watched as she fell to the damp ground. His hands were stained with her blood, but it was being washed away by the cold rain. Both people were drenched. 

His desire for the kill was stronger now than ever. He could see her bleeding, felt the rain washing away the warmth on his hands, and wanted more. He needed the warmth back. He wanted to stab his dagger into the soft flesh of a human body again, and again, until there was no life left to drain. 

But he could not do that to this girl. He'd had the choice of killing her or letting her live. He'd chosen to allow her life. So he put away the knife, still stained with her blood, and crouched next to her trembling body. She was crying, silently. 

She had said she wanted to know who he was. That implied she wanted to live; what was the purpose of knowledge if not to live with it and use it? What would she do if she learned to understand the factions? There were no women in the factions. But this girl was unique. She impressed him. The prey, fascinated by the predator, but not afraid? And he was fascinated by _her._

He leaned closer. She was speaking. "If…if you want me…I'll go with you. But only you. I'll die before you give me to your faction."

She _was _terrified. Not of anything in particular, he noticed, but simply for herself. There was no way she could guess what he would do to her, or if he "wanted" her as she had implied. He did want her, but right now, at least, the interest was not purely sexual. He wanted to study her. He wanted to know if it was possible: could he have found the first (perhaps only) woman to be worthy of the Pride? And if so, how would she be part of it? She could not join their hunts.

But the idea fascinated him. Could she survive in the Pride? She had said herself she had nowhere else to go. Perhaps this was her only chance at survival. The prey living amongst the predators. What a paradox! 

And, best of all, he vowed, if she did not prove to be worthy, he would kill her, and this time he would give her no choice. He would take it slowly, immerse himself in her blood, and it would, he knew, be the most satisfying kill he would ever make.

There was no thunder. Only cold and wet. Squall scooped up the crying girl, and went about his business.

  
* 

The looks he received upon carrying a girl into the den (along with the usual groceries) were nothing short of incredulous. Dripping with rainwater, he ignored them, dropped the goods off by the door, and continued on his way to his room. The den itself was poorly lit with oil lamps, and once the Lion had pushed the flap to his room out of the way, he was assaulted by darkness. He maneuvered blind, accurately enough, depositing the bleeding, trembling girl upon his stack of cushions and padding that served as his bed. He reached up to a wall shelf, snatching a scrap of matches from the edge, and quickly lit the nearest oil lamp on the same shelf. He shook the match out, turned around to find this next-in-line standing in his doorway, staring at him like a drunken frog.

Squall's look darkened, and he slung rainwater from his eyes. He did not like his privacy being so boldly infringed upon. "Problem?" Was his only word. 

"Not exactly," Seymour sniffed, still gawking. "Just makin' sure you know what you brought home with ya. Looks like some girl took a likin' to ya."

"Not likely," Squall muttered absently, already half-ignoring Seymour's commentary. Discarding his jacket, he tossed it carelessly over the girl, who had now quieted and appeared to be in the drifts of exhausted sleep. "I just tried to kill her. You got a stick on you?"

"Just so happens." Fumbling in his pocket for a moment, Seymour produced the requested cigarette, tossed it across the room. Squall caught it deftly, used the flame of the oil lamp to light it, and warmed his chilled body with a breath of smoke. He sat down on the edge of his "bed," seemingly oblivious to the girl who lay behind him. 

He motioned for Seymour to come in. "Sit down somewhere," he said, waving his cigarette at the general circumference of the small room.

Seymour did so, snatching a pillow from the corner and tossing it to the cement floor, then lowering himself down to sit. Seymour was a stocky fellow, dark-skinned, and heavyset without being overweight. Thick-boned and brutish, he fairly outweighed Squall. But he hadn't Squall's killer instinct, or his love for blood. It was well known that the Lion's bloodthirstiness and deadly skill were enough to keep him in command; he lived up to the reputation. Pride members were not exempt from the Lion's jaws if they misbehaved or got in his way. Seymour knew this as well as anyone; he was the closest thing Squall had to a "friend." Now he eyed Squall wryly, before proffering his hand to the sleeping girl. "So, Lionel, you got the hots f'this one or what?"

Squall took another drag, betraying a humorless, open-mouthed smile that was almost a laugh. He shook his head slightly. "You wouldn't believe me if I explained it to you."

"Oh, yeah?" Seymour lit himself one, leaned back on one hand. "Try me."

It seemed at first that the Pride leader had not heard him, and Seymour was about to repeat himself when he got a disappointing answer. "Nah…nah, leave it alone. I don't feel like explaining myself."

"Eh, suit yerself." The next-in-line blew smoke in Squall's face. "I'm tellin' you though, that's a damn bad idea if I ever saw it. You gonna get questions, and soon enough you gonna have to answer 'em. She yours?"

"Maybe. If she is, it's not your business, so keep out of it."

"Just askin'."

The two sat some more, not saying anything. 

Seymour noticed the girl was bleeding. "You weren't kiddin' 'bout tryin' to kill 'er, were ya?"

"No."

"Seems that's not all there is to it, or she'd be dead 's roadkill."

"She asked me to kill her."

Seymour's eyebrows shot up. "Say 'gin?" 

"I came up on a couple of dogs. Killed them all, but she was still there. I figured it'd be stupid to let her go, and stupid to give her to the Pride, so I was gonna pop 'er off, figured I'd get it over with." Squall was relaxing a little. "Gave her the choice of coming here or letting me kill her. She asked me to kill her."

"Get yer head outta yer ass!"

"I'm serious."

"You didn't, though. I can see, she's still breathin'." 

"Told me if I wanted her, she'd go with me, so long as I didn't give her to you losers."

"That's a rough one, Leo. You ain't much of a romantic."

"I thought it was a fair deal."

"I may not be psychic," Seymour was laughing, "but I can tell ya when you are _lyin' _out yer dick. Be honest," he prompted. "Tell me why she's here."

"You're not touching her."

"Did I say anything about that? Come on, Leo."

"Quit calling me that." Squall smashed the used-up butt on the floor, smothering it. "If I tell you, you're gonna keep your damn mouth shut."

"All ears, no teeth. What's up?"

The Pride leader sighed, clasping his hands together and staring at the floor in thought. "I wasn't lying before, but…there's something about this girl. She's not an idiot, for one thing. Another, she's got a pretty good sense of where she is…and she wants to 'understand' me."

The cackling laughter this brought about nearly made Seymour drop his cigarette. "_Understand _you?! Damn, man, you got yerself a shrink, there?"

"You don't get it," Squall spat, suddenly angry. His tone of voice shut Seymour up fast. "You know me. I don't do things for kicks. She's worth something. I've got this feeling about her. She's important, Seymour. To me, anyway."

"So y'gonna help fix that bleedin' stab wound, or ain'tcha?"

"What?"

"You _stabbed _'er, y' dumb shit! You think she's gonna do jack for ya if she's bleedin' all over the place? Damn! Whatchu been sniffin' t'nite, Leo?"

"I've had just about enough of you," Squall snapped, standing up and starting towards his next-in-line. Seymour got up, backpedaling. "Get out! And shut yourself up!" 

Another moment and Seymour was gone, leaving the door flap wavering in the lamplight, causing tides of shadow to ebb and flow across the room. 

Squall turned to stare at the girl. Seymour was right, of course. She'd been injured, badly. She needed time to rest and heal, just like any other living thing. For some reason, Squall had neglected to think of this when he'd carried her here. He'd been so preoccupied with her curious behavior…and his odd feeling about her. She was special. She was different. Something about her wasn't right…or wasn't wrong.

Perhaps that was it. She was a silver-blood. She lived under the Government, or she had at one time. But she didn't act like a silver-blood. She acted…he wasn't sure how she acted. Unique. 

He came to kneel beside her, observing her idly as he thought. He noted her hair color: black as pitch, with dark violet-red colored bangs and two natural caramel streaks on either side. Indeed, a pretty girl, if rather strange. 

She was still bleeding. Thinking about this, he placed his hand over the wound, feeling the pleasant warmth of blood beneath his fingers. Again he had the distant, wistful urge to kill her. The thought was seductive, the fantasy of the action sensual in his mind. Like desire it rose, and, like desire, he ignored it deftly. It was as common an arousal as that of his body, and just as easy, just as torturous, to live with. It wasn't a task in this case. More and more, he was convinced that this girl must be allowed to live, at least for now. 

She stirred beneath the damp coat he'd flung over her, and he snatched his hand back as he would from a venomous alley viper. As he watched, she fretted in a light sleep, murmured unintelligibly, and woke with a start. Her eyes opened, blinked a few times, and finally focused on him.

There was no fear in that gaze. In fact, it seemed her fear faded the moment she saw him. The more he watched her, the more fascinated he became. She was so puzzling. 

"You…you're still here," she said quietly, her voice weak and tired. "I'm not…dead?"

The Lion tilted his head to one side, briefly, a sideways nod. "Not yet."

"Thanks for the reassurance," came the dry reply, followed by a far more parched string of coughs.

She was thirsty, he realized. She needed water. He searched his mind for where he might find some in the immediate vicinity, then remembered the bag he'd dropped by the door. Chances were it was still there. Quickly, soundlessly, he got up and checked, lifting the flap to his room enough so he could see. Sure enough, the bag was still there, and he went to fish through it, bringing out one of many plastic containers of bottled water he'd bought earlier that evening. He brought it back with him. He set it beside the girl as he came to kneel next to her again. "You need this?" was all he asked.

"Yes, thank you…" With apparent discomfort, she reached out to take the offering, fumbled with the top until she got it open, and drank from it gratefully.

It felt odd to him, what he had just done. The only people he ever provided for were those in the Pride, and even then, he only brought them supplies, what they needed and what he needed to survive. He had never tended to an individual life outside his own. It was bizarre—he knew when he needed something, when he was thirsty, or hungry, or injured—but since he could not feel what this girl needed, he had to guess, and as her coughs had proven, he needed some kind of reminder. With himself, no reminder was necessary. 

He was used to killing. He was not used to actively trying to keep someone else alive. But if he wanted answers, he knew that it was necessary in this case. He would have to learn quickly. 

She had finished the water, and was staring at him again with tired eyes. "What is your name?"

The question caught him off-guard, and earned her only a confused look.

"Your name," she repeated. "I have nothing to call you. I'd rather not call you 'killer.'" She laughed slightly at some joke. "That's a dog's name."

_A dog's name. _The Lion scowled. "Squall," he said quietly, as if he wanted to keep his identity secret. 

"Squall…" She tested the word. "Interesting name…where'd you get it?"

He regarded her cautiously. "I've always had it." It wasn't like a name was something you could buy. Names were either given, or they were earned.

"I see…well, that's okay. It's fitting."

Why did he need _her _approval? Squall scowled. 

"My name's Riona," she announced, wearily laying her head down on the jury-rigged mattress. Her eyes closed, and she quickly drifted off once more. "Nice to meet you…Squall."

*

The next few days felt like a bizarre dream. Squall did not sleep in his room. Instead he "borrowed" Seymour's; kicked his next-in-line out of the tiny quarters in order to use it for himself. Seymour, grouchy at having his abode confiscated, subsequently evicted the third-in-line, the only other Pride member who boasted his own personal sleeping area (which was even smaller than Seymour's). The third-in-line was therefore forced to bed down in the den's main living area with the rest of the Pride, he in turn rousting another, younger man from one of the old couches, consequently instigating complaints and spats here and there over sleeping spots and causing the general mood in the air to thicken into a cantankerous fog. The place indeed became something of a proverbial lion's den, intermittent bellows and growls echoing off the walls. 

Squall still took them out for the hunts, still did not participate in it himself. In fact, he hardly thought much about anything at all. Time seemed to pass in a blur when he was outside the den. Away from Her. Away from…what was her name? Riona. 

She was so perplexing to him, and his mind was fascinated with the puzzle. She was in understandable pain, though she seemed to be getting better, slowly. She was lucky there had been no infection. He'd brought her a cloth and water with which to wash the wound herself, brought her food when she needed it, taken her outside when she needed to relieve herself. Along the way somewhere, he'd realized that he was, in effect, taking care of her. 

No one questioned him. No one dared, though he knew that his own actions must be confusing to the Pride. He'd openly forbidden them to go near Riona; she belonged to him, and no one else was to touch her. At first it had seemed obvious—the Lion had found a woman he particularly liked, and was unwilling to share. But when it became obvious that he was not sleeping with her, tensions in the Pride began to rise. Even Squall felt it. 

Still, Riona did not attempt escape, nor did she make any demands. She was not a burden on the Pride in that sense, nor did she require much to begin with. Beyond that first day, Squall had said little to her, lacking any particular questions, though thousands of curiosities festered irritatingly in his mind, like thought-provoking mites. 

A week passed. Two. Aside from Riona's odd presence, life remained unchanged for the Pride, and the discomfort she invoked was far from enough to cause any sort of uproar. The Lion remained his usual, brutal self, and life went on.

One night, when Squall and his Pride returned from one of their hunts, he found Riona standing up in his room, looking over the contents of the shelf above his sleeping place. It was the first time he'd seen her standing on her own since the night they'd first encountered each other. She heard him enter and turned around. Her eyes held in them that calculating look that he had seen when she had first realized just what he was, and had said so, back in that damp alley. 

By some mutually understood, unsaid law, they both waited until the Pride had passed his room and into the main den before either of them said a word. Then Riona spoke.

"When you go out with them," she started, then paused, thinking over her words, "it's to find people out on the streets, isn't it? You plunder, rape and kill. Then you come home…here." She looked away from him, stared through the wall as if it were a window. 

He gestured at nothing with one hand. "We're a faction," was all he said. 

"Right. It's what you do. How you survive…" She sounded saddened. "But why rape? Why not just kill and be done with it?" She glared at him, suddenly, her narrow eyes accusing him.

He shook his head. "I don't know," he muttered honestly. "I don't do that. I just find people."

Riona's gaze softened a little. "And kill them," she appended.

"Yes."

"You like to kill?"

This question was a dangerous one. Yes, he liked to kill. More than liked. It was a passion. He adored it. But to tell her that? He suspected he shouldn't. But he would not lie, either. That would be just as pointless. Instead he stepped closer to her, reached out to take her by the shoulder.

She batted his hand away. "Don't touch me," he hissed with snake-like fervor. 

He responded by reaching for her again, and caught her arm in his powerful grip when she tried to knock him away. Here he stopped. He did not move. He simply stared at her, and held her still. 

He could feel her pulse drum beneath his fingers, repressed a tremor of bloodlust. "What I do has a purpose," he told her quietly in a near monotone. "They do what they do because they're driven to do it. I let them, because it makes them my allies. I survive. _You,_" his voice rose to a snarl, "are here by my charity. Otherwise now, _you _would be dead." He let go of her, and backed away. He watched her. She stared at him uncertainly, rubbing at her arm where he had gripped her. "How I think and what I feel, are a part of what I do."

"But you're different."

"What?" He shook his head, lifted his arm slightly in a motion of confusion.

"You've got a sense of value. You kill, but you don't rape like the others. Why?"

He frowned, remembering. He had participated, once. Only once. Never in his life had he felt so sick with himself as that one time. One girl, one struggle…it had been enough. He would not force himself on anyone like that again. "I'm not a part of it. It's foolish."

Riona was silent for a short time. She appeared to debate something with herself, then blurted, "I told you if you wanted me, I'd go with you. You let me live, and brought me here. If you didn't do it because you wanted me, then why did you?"

So this was the question she had been waiting to ask him. He had seen it in her eyes, before, and could see her tension ease a little after she had spoken it aloud. 

"You're different," he answered vaguely. "You might be able to survive here."

"Survive?"

"Stay with us. Become one of us."

"No."

"Not one of _them,_" Squall corrected, motioning behind him in the direction of the main den. "One of us. One of the faction."

"How?"

"…I don't know. I think it's possible."

"And if I can't?"

He shrugged. "Then you'll die."

Apparently, she had expected this answer. No fear touched her face, only stern resolution. She dared to come closer to him, staring fiercely into his icy eyes. "If that happens," she whispered sharply, "don't throw me to your men. Kill me yourself."

He nodded, slowly. "I would have, anyway." This said, he turned to leave.

"There's something you should think about, Squall," she called from behind him. 

He stopped. "What's that?"

"You've killed a lot of people who were just like me."

When he was certain she would say nothing else, he left the little room, turned down the hall to walk to "his" tiny chambers. 

Somehow, that last thing she had said to him actually made him feel a little better.

*

The essence of the dream became everyday. Riona's wound finally healed, for the most part, and she was eventually allowed to roam the den as she pleased, without being harassed by any of the men. They took to ignoring her as she took to watching them. 

Squall moved back into his room, which made the rest of the Pride quite happy. He made a separate pile of blankets and cushions for Riona to sleep on, and reclaimed his own bed. She slept in the corner opposite him, and they generally spoke little. This was fine by him. Almost like having a pet; she was there, he fed her, cared for her, but otherwise she served no other real purpose beyond having her around. She seemed to warm up to the treatment well enough. Still, he found her interesting, talked with her on occasion. She was a reasonable person, intelligent, realistic. He liked her, as much as he could like anyone. The only real difference was that she was female. 

Which could be a bother at times. The Lion killed women. He did not live with them. His Pride preyed on them. Yet here she was. It was a temptation on some nights when he had trouble sleeping. He would watch her, all the while fighting his need to kill. When winter rolled in, and cold beset the den, the need for warmth transferred into the need for blood—made worse simply because she was there, helpless to defend against him should he attack her. 

One night he found himself by her side, staring at her, with a fury of intent in his mind. But he could not bring himself to so much as touch her. Not yet…

She woke up when he sighed, sat up with a start when she saw him. The two faced each other, almost eye-to-eye.

"You were watching me." It was an unnecessary comment.

He answered it anyway. "You're interesting."

"Do you do this every night?"

"No."

"Just tonight? Why?"

"I felt like it." He made certain his answers conveyed the fact that he was not about to tell her what had truly brought him over to her. 

"You're not telling me why," she spat in her frustration. "But you have another reason. I can see it in your eyes, Squall. You want something. Tell me…what is it? …Is it…me?" She looked suddenly afraid.

His eyes, which had apparently betrayed him, looked to the floor, and his face followed his gaze. His head bowed at her question. "Not really," he murmured. Then amended, "Not exactly."

"Then what?" She sat up straighter. "Talk to me. You never say anything. You've taken care of me, even though I know _I _mean nothing to you. You never give a reason. Why? Why can't you tell me?"

"I have no words to tell you."

"I've known you for a month, and I don't know anything about you." Riona shook her head, scolding him with but a look. "Not a damn thing. You think I'm going to stay content just staying here and doing nothing?"

"You have a place to stay."

"It's not enough to just stay _alive," _she fired back. "I have to _live. _I want a life, not an existence. If you think you can keep me here like a fancy pet, you're out of your mind."

"There is nowhere else for you to go!" He snatched at her arm, grabbed it, and held her still. "What you want means nothing. _Nothing._ Are you too stupid to understand that?"

"Maybe, but at least I'm not so dead inside that I've lost my will to care!" Riona wrenched her arm away, backing against the wall and glaring at him in the darkness. "Not like you."

He did nothing in response, said nothing. He only stared blankly. The will to care? About what?

"Like me," the girl continued shakily. "I…I do care, about _you. _You matter to me."

His frustration with her had faded. His confusion heightened. "I don't understand."

"I've been watching you," she explained. "I've been watching the others, too… Remember I told you I wanted to know who you are? Because I thought you were different. You _are _different. You're…you're the only one out of all of them who gives a crap about what's right and wrong. You…you have it in you to care. They don't."

"I'm not different from them."

"Yes, you are!" She covered her mouth, realizing she'd almost shouted. When she continued, it was with constrained fervor. "You can kill and not feel bad. Why? Because it's necessary. You've even made yourself like doing it. It's your one joy. You can't rape people. If you did, you wouldn't be able to live with yourself, because it's just wrong. There's no excuse. It's not necessary for you to survive, so you don't do it. Every time I mention it, you look so jaded I can tell you don't like it. You're strong enough to have maintained a heart…through all this." She motioned about his small chambers. "Even though you live this way…this terrible life…you still have a little decency in you. I…I admire that. That's why you matter, to me."

Still, he couldn't completely understand her. She said she cared. Care as in what? Value? Enjoy? There were too many definitions. But she was right about everything else. 

The need to kill became yet stronger in him. His mind absorbed her shape, analyzed every way he could kill her right at that moment. He found himself discarding, however, anything that would not require extreme precision and…_care_. Yes. She was special. If he killed her, he wanted the death to be unique. He wanted it to mean something. And he wanted her to know he was going to do it. He would not surprise her.

This talk about her not staying bothered him. He didn't want her to leave. He had no problem with dispatching her, but _losing _her—that was different. He could not allow that to happen.

"I want…" she began, interrupting his thoughts, but did she not finish.

Squall's curiosity plagued him until he prompted her. "What?"

"I want…to mean something to _you._ Since I came here…you're the closest thing to a friend I have." She cowered a little, as though expecting retaliation for her boldness. 

She got none. Only an answer. "You mean something."

"Then tell me something else," she whispered. "Tell me…what if I didn't fight? What if…I wasn't afraid? What if you didn't have to use force? Then, would it be wrong?" She watched him take this in. "Would it mean anything? Would you _want _it?"

"Would _you?_"

She smiled at his almost sarcastic response, and answered with another question that was quite serious, and more of a statement than a query. "Why does it matter?"

Squall thought, came up with no answer, or no way to word it. He looked uncomfortable, silently consulted the floor for advice.

Riona pressed the questions further, offering answers to go with them. "Is it because if I didn't want you, it would be wrong? Is it because you need me to wish it, first? Because if you did that, you'd do it _for _me, not _to _me? As much as you would do it for yourself?"

_"Yes!" _His answer stopped her escalating voice, irritated at her for speaking so loud, feeling suddenly trapped with nowhere to go. It had been a true answer. But it wasn't the whole answer. _Would you do it for me, as much as for yourself?_ He scowled at her spark of a smile, dousing it. "You've said too much." He was about to say something else, but the thought left him.

She wasn't perturbed by his underlying warning. "Really? And if I were to offer myself to you, now? Would you still say I've said too much? You can't kill me, because I'm no threat to you. If it's something you wanted, too…then there's nothing you can do except say yes."

He stared at her, dumbfounded. He could hardly believe what he was hearing. "And your reasons?"

To which she simply shrugged. "Just part of understanding you."

Understanding. Oh yes. Understanding a very dangerous side of him. He wondered just how well she realized that. But…if the offer was real… 

He stood slowly, reached out and took her by the arm, pulling her up with him. Ignoring her startled cry, he hauled her over next to him, caught her in both restraining arms before she could attempt escape. He held her there, in front of him, looking her over. She stared back at him fearfully. 

He stood still for a short time. Then, deliberately, he stepped into her, pressing his body against her. He did not give her room to struggle, nor did she try. But he did nothing else, simply watched her reaction, letting her _understand _the entirety of what she was suggesting. He let her understand what she faced—what she was offering herself to. A man far stronger than her, aggressive, dangerous, even cruel. Her soft blue, worn-out dress and his leather jeans were not enough to hide this fact from her, not when held so close. 

"This is what you're asking," he rumbled in her ear. "Are you afraid of it?"

She trembled in his grasp, but still, she did not struggle. "No," she said finally. "The only thing I'm afraid of…is that I'm wrong."

He had not been so close to her since he had held her at knifepoint in the alley. This time his excitement was for an altogether different reason. Thoughts of killing faded into the background of his mind, leaving only natural desire. Desire that was doubled when she suddenly wrapped her arms around his midsection, burying her face in his chest with a whimper of some unknown emotion. It was a familiar grip, like when she had held onto his arm in the alley. But this time, it was not uncomfortable. Rather, the touch was inviting, and her small, almost inaudible cry added to the intensity of the sensation. 

His head tilted back slightly; eyes closed, mind reeling from the contradiction between his emotions and reality. He could not have harmed her in that instant if he'd wanted to. For reasons he knew not why, her embrace set off a torrent of conflicting sensations inside of him, all so strong he was momentarily paralyzed. She obviously sought some sort of refuge in him, although surely she knew he would kill her the instant she gave him fair reason to. In denial of his own logic, he felt suddenly, viciously protective of her. Indeed, no one would harm her, unless it was him. Then only if she _allowed _it, or if it was necessary for him to do so. As long as he had no reason to kill her, she was safe with him. Perhaps she knew that. But he hoped she did not.

He felt _himself _tremble. He said the only thing that came to mind. "You have no reason to be afraid."

Her answer was a stronger hold on him. _Life _seemed to flow from her. He could sense it in the warmth of her body, the pulse of blood in her veins that he could feel easily through her tight grip. _What is this? _He couldn't explain to himself what he was feeling from her, or from himself. _Everything tingles…_

He hadn't thought, simply because the idea had never been relevant, about whether or not he could ever fall victim to seduction. Now he was sure, that was exactly what was happening, only he could find no reason for her to wish to seduce him. Unless she planned on killing him. But he knew she had no weapon. From everything he could tell about her since the day he met her, she was barely capable of killing at all. So the notion was at once dismissed. There was no danger here. Nothing but this strange and inescapable offer…this _request…_that Riona had made. 

Riona…he was even beginning to think of her by name.

His eyes opened again, and the killing fire had gone out of them. Instead burned lust, implacable, vicious, but not violent. His world had become devoid of violence, for the time being. There was no malice in him at all, in fact, no force necessary in his motions; she _let _him take her down, press her against the blankets and settle into her. She did not fight him at all—in fact, encouraged him, willingly stayed close to him rather than attempting escape. 

When it was over, and he pulled away from her long enough to rest and catch his breath, he couldn't help thinking through a haze of fatigue, that she had been right. This, he would do. Not to her, but for her, and there would be no killing, no forcing himself on her against her will. 

And in this, he realized that he had just engaged in what was quite possibly the best and worst mistake he had ever made.

*

Days passed slowly after that night. Little about life actually changed, save Squall felt a little more comfortable in general, not quite as intense as he had in the past month. Still, upon finding out that one of the Pride members had witnessed part of his "fun" the previous night, he had an entertaining enough time throwing the nosy boy around for a few minutes, breaking a few of the poor fellow's ribs and painting him black and blue in the process. Half-dead and begging for mercy, the fool had finally appeased his leader enough to save his miserable life, and crawled away to the dark recesses of the den's more decrepit areas before Squall had the chance to change his mind. 

This outlet of aggression left Squall in a relatively good mood for the next week. He felt in full control of himself and his Pride for the first time in months. His nights were restful, and though he and Riona spoke little, he felt that the tension between them had eased. She had even smiled at him once or twice, something he'd never seen her do before. 

Things were going well for him. Hence he had no real objection when Riona asked him if he would take her outside for the sake of allowing her some time out of captivity.

His one condition had been that they wait until early morning, when most of the factions were asleep and there would be little danger in the alleys. Judging this as fair, Riona agreed, and after a night spent talking to each other in whispers about meaningless things to keep themselves awake, they stole out into the cold blue dawn.

Squall was characteristically watchful, wary of every corner and shadow, but he didn't feel that there was too much to worry over; few people roamed the alleys in the morning, and those who did, he could generally take care of himself. 

He took her in a square loop, down open corridors that would have looked identical to each other if he hadn't been living in them for years. 

Riona spoke with him as they walked. "Have you always been the leader of the Pride?"

"Pretty much."

"Doesn't look like anyone else messes with you guys. You must be the top dogs around here."

Squall looked a little put off at this remark. "That's not the exact term I would use," he growled. Riona swore that if he'd been a cat, his ears would have laid flat against his head, so disgruntled did he appear. Thinking of this, she recomposed her words.

"Top cats, then?"

"Something like that." He appeared to regain a some of his inadvertently maimed dignity.

"So what does that make you," she grinned, "the alpha male?"

"You're talking in dog terms again."

"Sorry." She thought as they rounded another corner. "I really don't know anything about cats. I know people call you the Lion, and that your faction is the Pride, but I don't know why, exactly. Don't real lion prides have a lot of girls in them?"

"Not the point of it." Squall glanced at her. "Point is we're a group, and no one pisses with us. Like you said, we rule this area."

"Oh…" Another short time of thought and wind over the rooftops. "What is that card game that your men are always playing? The cards look like they have monsters on them."

At this, Squall snorted disdainfully, making a show of rolling his eyes. "Tarot cards of some kind. Dumbasses think they mean something. It's bullshit, but if it makes 'em happy, then whatever." He made a dismissive gesture. "It's not any of my business."

They came back to the entrance of the den. Riona stopped short of going in, and turned to face her escort. "Squall, there's something else I want to ask you."

"What's that?"

"Is there anywhere you go to be alone, sometimes? You know, where no one else can find you, if you're ever feeling bad or need to think things through?"

"My room, usually." He looked off to the side, shrugged his fur collar closer about his neck.

He looked uncomfortable, like a bird with its feathers fluffed against a chill wind. Riona pressed her question anyway. "Nowhere else?"

"Well…" There was a long minute where he considered not answering, just going back inside where it was warm and leaving the question unsatisfied. But, he supposed, not answering now only meant he'd have to answer later. He may as well. "Yeah, there's a place."

"Take me there." Riona wrapped the blanket she'd taken with her tightly around her shoulders.

"Why? It's freezing out here."

"Please? Just this once, I promise."

Squall sighed his indecision, glanced around, down each stretch of the alley. "All right," he finally relented. "Come on."

It began to snow before they reached their destination: a wide, square dead end, accessible only through a very narrow space between two buildings. No windows faced the depression, so anyone who might end up there was never seen or heard through the stone walls. 

Riona visibly fought a chill as she entered the place. In a few places, bones littered the ground—she had no doubt that these were human bones—and on one wall, a dark stain that could have been blood etched out a cryptic message: ALL FOR ONE, ONE FOR ALL. Beside it was a common symbol of the factions, a square slashed into two triangles by a single diagonal line. 

Squall watched her stare in grim fascination at the place. "This is it. Nothing much to see." The comment was a cover-up, for his intense wish to leave this place. It was a killing ground, _his _killing ground. He had dragged dozens of people into this crevice, alone, to deal with them personally. This was not a place he did his usual jobs. This was where he took those poor fools outside his faction that he had found roaming the area at undesignated times. If he felt especially bloodthirsty, he would often kill all but one if there were more, then simply disable the remaining trespasser. The unfortunate he'd chosen to keep alive would be brought here. Here, a predator toyed with its prey before he killed it, torturing the victim with terror and pain before finally allowing it to die. What he did here was his own personal evil, not to be witnessed by anyone else. This is where he learned what killed people quickly, what took longer, what caused the most pain and what was relatively painless, how deep to thrust the dagger before a vital organ was hit, how to twist the knife so that it killed instantly, or, using the same weapon, how to disembowel a victim while leaving them alive to suffer the agony. One or two bodies had been left here long enough to rot away, eaten to bones by rats and dogs. Most of them had been dragged elsewhere after death. Nevertheless, this place was not where he wished to have Riona. Even now, simply being here kindled phantoms of bloodlust in him. A hunger for the sight of red began to build behind his eyes, which narrowed in a heartless scowl in reaction to the sensation. He shot a stare at Riona. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

She turned and stared back at him, but did not move.

"Come on," he said again, starting to get nervous at her odd silence. His eyes fixed on her. He felt a wild spark inside him. Instantly, it was back, all of it, as it had been that night a week ago. Burning need to kill caused him to tremble, his gloved hands clenched and opened anxiously. "This place is dangerous, Riona," he murmured quietly, but he knew already that it was too late. It would not be long before his instinct overcame his logic.

She kept watching him, and nodded slowly, as though his reaction had been predictable, even hoped for. "I can't leave here, Squall," she told him softly, a hint of sadness creeping into her voice. "Ever."

His breath nearly stopped in his throat. What was she talking about? They had to leave. If she wanted to live, she had to go back to the den with him, where he could collect himself, where they weren't alone, where there was no danger…

He stepped over to her, lightly grasping her shoulder. "Riona, it's not safe here."

"Oh," she almost laughed, not quite looking into his eyes. "It's safe for you, Squall. Just…not for me." She met his gaze, then, and her sad smile told him all he needed to know.

Squall's body went numb with shock. No, she wasn't safe here. She wasn't safe because here, he could kill her, quietly and in private. She had known that from the beginning, which was why she had asked him to bring her here. 

She had not come here to go sight-seeing. She had come here to die.

"I didn't understand it before," she whispered gently to him, reaching up and touching his cheek with her fingertips, "but I do now. Ever since I met you, you've looked at me in this way…at first, I couldn't figure out what it was. Now I know…since the day we met, Squall, you've wanted, more than anything else, to kill me." Her smile faded as his face melted into an even darker scowl. "But it's not because you hate me," she went on. "It's because you love me."

Squall continued to stare at her impassively. What she was telling him was almost incomprehensible. But she had ways of making things make sense to him, so he listened.

"Your one joy in life is killing," Riona spoke as she stepped in close to him, leaning against him, embracing him and running her hands along his back beneath his jacket, just to be able to touch him one more time. "It's what you do. It's what this place is for, isn't it?" She half-laughed again, watching his cold eyes flicker from her to the blood-writing on the wall and back. "Because it's your passion…and because you love me, you want to do this for me, to show me that side of you…the best of it. But just like that night, you won't do it, not unless I want you to. If I ask you to, then coming from you, a master of killing, it's a gift to me, instead of a punishment. I want you to know this—" She pressed her hand against his chest, pushing back enough to look him in the eyes. "I came from a home that would be better called a dominion than a family. The way you treat your Pride is tender compared to the way my father treats his wives. There, money is the only item. Even survival means nothing compared to money, and respect is something for the leaders of business. I feel that you at least have your priorities straight." With a heavy sigh, she stared at her feet, not moving her hand from his chest. "I can't live the way you do," she said in a tiny voice, "and I can't live the way I used to. I can't leave, Squall, because that would mean leaving you, and I wouldn't have a chance by myself. But here…for the first time in my life, even though I was captive in your den…I felt grateful." Her smile returned half-way and she looked at him again. "And this is how I want to end it. This is the last thing I want to know." Water threatened her eyes. "I can't go on like this, with you, and I can't leave you and live with myself. So I want to stop while I'm still happy." She shook her head, barely maintaining her pained smile. "And I want you to do it." 

Her hand kneaded his shirt up in her fists, stopping the nervous motion only when he placed his own warm hand gently over her shaking fingers. 

He listened to her whisper. "End my life here, and let me die happy. Do it with all your passion, and stay with me until I'm gone... That's all I want," she concluded finally, biting her trembling lower lip. "Please…"

Squall's dispassion had turned to intensity as he listened to her. Somehow, her logic made sense. Was this true, what she said—was he in love with her? Is that why his need to kill her ran so deeply, though it affected him in such unusual ways? Was love, then…not just a thing told to children in storybooks? A meaningless emotion that had no logical basis? Was it simply…a need to be who he was, but for another? A need to give himself and his soul to someone, in the only way he knew how?

He wrapped one arm around her, pulling her closer to him, while she cried silently and rested her head against his chest. His other hand slipped silently to his belt, where his dagger slept at his hip, hidden from view. His anxiety had left him. He breathed easy. Easy…that is how it would be. However she wanted him to kill her, he would make it easy. For her. For himself. 

There was no escaping this. She'd walked into his arms, asking him to bring death to her. In effect, bared her throat to him. His need for the kill could not be stopped now. He let it come. There was no reason to fight it. It was what he needed. It was what Riona needed. She truly wanted it. Not as an escape—but as a means of fulfilling both their wishes. She understood what no one else could: what he wanted to do to her was not a punishment, but a gift. And because she understood that, he knew she must be right. She was right. He was doing this because he loved her. 

Slowly, softly, Squall smiled. He pulled the knife from his belt.

Riona heard the blade come out of its sheath. She started to shake, natural fear overwhelming her. But he did not stab her. He only held her close, for a while, arms wrapped about her in warm comfort. When she managed to look up at him, he smiled at her. Such a smile—so gentle, it was a wonder it was coming from Squall. A smile that showed not only fondness, but appreciation, gratitude. She returned it, damp-faced.

Squall brushed lightly at her tangled black hair. Softly, he once more gave her the option: "Fast or slow?"

She had been ready to answer. "Slow," she said quietly. "I want time to be with you."

Squall's intricate visions of fancy ways to kill her had long since vanished. That was not needed, here. Too easy to make mistakes. No, it would be simple, he would make the kill perfectly done in every way. For her, he would not give anything less. 

His free hand stroked her neck gently, then tilted her head up to look at him. Her eyes were pleading, frightened, but strangely peaceful. "Don't be afraid," he murmured to her. 

The hand that held the knife curled around behind her, and in another moment, Riona jumped as the touch of steel pressed gently against the side of her neck.

Squall let the blade hover over the artery for a few seconds. Another breath, and the first cut was done. The razor-edge of his knife glided cleanly through Riona's skin, slicing just deep enough to start a rivulet of red trailing across her flesh. He held her still when she startled at the pain of the steel's bite. She coughed. He steadied her. Then she relaxed into his arms again, and he held her for a few moments more, calming her as the life began its slow drain from her body. 

When his shirt began to stain from her blood, he took her left arm in his hand, followed it down until he was able to intertwine his fingers with hers. She was able to watch him make the second, and final, cut down the length of her wrist, and he let her squeeze his hand at the stinging pain it no doubt caused. 

It was done. Easy, slow. Aside from the pain of her cuts, she would feel almost as if she were falling asleep. A slow, breathless sleep of weakness and exhaustion. That way she would welcome death, and the rest it would promise her; and he would be her assurance, her comfort. He would keep her safe and protected close to him. Squall put his knife away, not bothering to clean it. Carefully, he helped Riona over to the one un-dirtied wall in the place. He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders—for it would not be long before she would begin to feel very cold, indeed. He sat down with her, letting her lean into him and cling to him as blood trailed down her neck and arm in streams. He held onto her, letting his presence comfort her, knowing how strange it was, what he was doing, and had done. Such a bizarre gift to give…but her gift in return had been to allow him this experience. It would be the best and most memorable kill he would ever make.

Riona startled him by reaching out to grasp his arm with her uninjured hand. Shaking, she pressed her bleeding wrist into his hand, and held fast, streaking him red with her blood. He watched her do this with shocked fascination, staring at his arm even after she'd released him. Then he felt her hand against his cheek, and it, too, became painted with the scarlet life. Her fingers trailed down his neck, and he shivered at the warm liquid left behind on his skin. And was _this _her gift to him—satisfying this terrible, morbid dream of his, however twisted it may have seemed? She must have understood it existed for him nonetheless. He caught her hand as she started to retract it, stared at her in near-paralytic astonishment. 

She said nothing to him, only smiled at his bloodstained face. Then she closed her eyes and curled up next to him, content with his arms around her.

The chill of the alley ceased to have meaning. Squall was aware only of the girl in his arms, slowly dying, quietly awaiting sleep. Every now and again, she would shiver, as if shaken by a tremor of pain or momentary fear, and look up at him for reassurance. Each time, Squall would hold her closer, knowing in his own silence that he was her guardian. It seemed to comfort her, for she would smile, and relax against him. He'd keep as close as he could, so she would know that at no point would she ever be alone. She had nothing to fear from death in his arms.

He had become friend and companion to death, bringing it with him wherever he went like a cherished familiar. He knew all sides of death, and knew that "gentle" was a word rarely used, but often appropriate to describe it. Riona would not suffer death's often cruel wrath. As death's agent, he could show her the softer side of his passion. Death could be beautiful. He would not let it frighten her. 

She would be safe there, in death's silence. His silence. He would be her sentinel until it came for her, as it came for everyone. As it would come for him, some day.

Somewhere within the hour, Riona lost consciousness, and Squall waited, holding her protectively against his chest, feeling her pulse fade away into nothingness over the course of time. Soon it was gone, and she died, still warm in his arms. He hadn't cared to count the minutes, only knew that he had watched her last breath, and that she was gone forever.

Despite that he knew she was no longer aware of him, he stayed with her for a while, thinking to himself, still holding her as if he could yet save her from fear or pain. He did not mourn—there was no reason to grieve. She had gotten what she wanted. So had he. His only wonder was what he would do now that she was gone. What else was there, now that she was no longer alive, that was of any interest? It was a feeling he had not been expecting. Her life was over. He was still here. He was lost without her.

In the stillness of morning, the Lion felt suddenly, terribly alone. 

  
* 

Somehow, he left the wall, and eventually the alley. He vaguely remembered laying Riona's body reverently on the cold ground, covering her with his jacket before standing and walking away. He was still stained with her blood. He wished he could wear it forever. 

He returned to the den, returned to his home. He felt tired, like he had been running all day long. He needed to sleep…all he wanted to do was sleep. He wasn't interested in anything else.

An alarm clicked somewhere in his mind as he approached the entrance to the den. His personal thoughts on hold, he glanced about him, and drew his dagger. Something was not right. There was an odd smell…

Gas. Squall grimaced and backed away from the den. Suffocating amounts of gas. Coming from the den. What had happened, here?

"I see you're still hangin' around here."

Squall whirled, dagger ready. He already knew who it was. Sailor. 

Sailor stood facing him, arms folded and a triumphant leer on his face. Dirty blonde hair and an outfit made of brown leather, a scarred eye and tanned face made him unmistakable. He was much taller than Squall, by a few inches, broad-shouldered, and powerfully muscled. 

He waved casually in the direction of the den. "Oh, they're dead," he assured the Lion. "One of my men followed you and your little lady to your precious hideaway. Even a lot like yours drop like flies to chlorine explosives. Paid a pretty sum f'those things. Worked like a charm, though. Your Pride didn't have a chance. Say…where's the chick, anyway? Wouldn't suppose, ah, that's _her _blood you're wearin', is it? Squall, my man. Didn't know you had it in ya."

Squall's eyes narrowed. His grip on the handle of his dagger tightened in fury at the accusation. Here was Sailor. So where were the rest of his wild dogs? Where was the Galleon?

As if in answer to his unspoken question, the rooftops and the ends of the alley became alive with people, snickering and jeering at him from the shadows. Daggers gleamed like wet fangs in the rising sunlight.

Squall jerked his head at the nearest group of dogs. "That your posse, Sailor? Or did you need a few chaperones just to come and see me?" He smirked at Sailor's subsequent frown. "Just can't handle me yourself, can you? Like you couldn't three years ago, when you tucked tail and bolted with the Pride snapping at your heels. Stinking mutt. You're still a sorry coward."

Snarling from the shadows, the Galleon threatened to converge on Squall, to silence his shameless insults to their leader and their faction. But Sailor made a sharp motion that held them.

Sailor pulled his own dagger, turning it around in his hand, murderous scowl locked in on Squall, who returned the look with added defiance.

"I still gotta bone t' pick with you, Squall. This time, I ain't gonna need no _posse. _Jus' you an' me, prettyboy. Ain't no one gonna interfere."

Squall realized then that no matter the outcome of the impending fight, he would die today. Sailor's Galleon lay in wait around every corner. Even if he killed Sailor, the Galleon would take him down, and he'd become another dead body torn to pieces by the brutal fangs of the wild dogs.

_Good a day as any, I guess. _

Without any warning or word, Squall twisted and closed the distance between himself and Sailor, and the contest began. 

Like the equivalent animals, Squall and Sailor dueled with each other like Lion and Ridgeback, circling, striking, grappling, snarling. They had both been killing with their weapons for years. Now it was master vs. master, two champions fighting for supremacy. Squall promised himself he would not allow Sailor the privilege of triumph. 

The morning rays cast violet shadows in the alley as the two combatants fought, shadows that rose like terrible monsters to the full height of the buildings. 

Sailor tripped. Squall was on him in an instant. In the next, his knife was through his opponent's heart. To be sure, he twisted the blade, and tore it out. Sailor fell lifeless to the cement ground. It was over.

But not over. Squall did not stay to gloat his victory. He did the only thing he could do in the brief moment of confusion Sailor's death would cause.

He dropped his knife, and ran.

He knew where to head. Open ground. People, public, anywhere that the general population could see him. He cleared the alley in a few seconds, turned and dashed past a few dogs that had previously been lying in wait for him, but were now frozen, dumbfounded by their leader's sudden defeat. 

The spell did not last long. Squall heard footsteps behind him. Dozens of footsteps, everywhere. The rooftops, the alleys—he passed the ambushes moments before they could react. 

He had killed their "alpha male," as Riona had called it. Now, he had to face the pack. _He _was the hunter become hunted. _He _was the prey. 

He had nothing. Only the hope that he could make it into the open…

Someone grabbed at the back of his shirt. He stumbled. Then they were on him.

A mob of dogs, all of them kicking, trampling, stabbing. They picked him up, collectively threw him into a garbage heap, dragged him out again and slammed him against the wall of a building. Someone punched him, then another fist, and another. He was knocked down, and felt a thousand hammering fists and feet pummeling him with vengeful ferocity. 

He couldn't fight. He knew it would be over soon. At least they were too lost in their rage to keep him alive, torment and torture him. When he felt the blades, he welcomed the spilling of his own blood. He opened his eyes one final time, managed to see past the storm of fists and knives and feet and faces, and out into the lightening sky of day.

So death had finally chosen to release him from his loyal servitude. _Riona, _he cried out in his mind. _Wait for me! I'll be with you again, soon…_

Something struck his head, and Squall blacked out before he had the chance to feel his heart bleed.

*

His eyes fluttered open. Blearily, he glanced at his bedside clock. What time was it?

_4:30 AM__. What the—_"God_damn…_"

Slowly, Squall pushed himself up on one arm, shaking his head to clear it. He was sweating. Too hot. It was too hot in here. He quickly discarded his nightshirt, flinging it to the floor with something like annoyance. Then, forgetting his own discomfort, he turned around, leaned over Rinoa, who was still lying with her head buried in the pillow. He was about to shake her awake when her shoulders jerked, he felt her body tremble. 

Gently, almost cautiously, he rested his hand on her shoulder, his eyes turning up in concern. She got up beneath his hand, and immediately wrapped her arms around him, holding onto him as though her life depended on it and choking painfully on tears that were suddenly coming down in torrents.

He held her tightly, whispering to her in his mind, knowing she could hear him in her heart, knowing also, somehow, that she had awakened from the same dark delusion he had. _It's all right. It's over. It was just a dream. I'm right here. _He wished he felt more certain of himself; he wished he could believe his own thoughts. _Just a dream…_

Just a dream? But it was so _clear! _He knew everything. The Pride, the alleys, Sailor, the Squall that he had dreamed he had been—he remembered them all, still in perfect clarity. It did not feel like a dream to him. It felt more…familiar_. _Like recollection.

Squall held Rinoa and rocked her for a while, until his chest was soaked with her tears. "It's over," he repeated aloud when she had finally managed to quell her sobs. "We're back here, in Garden. There's nothing to be afraid of. It was a dream…"

Slowly, Rinoa lifted her eyes, drawing on Squall's confidence to still her shaking. "I-I know." She shook her head, stared at him, taking in his scar, his expression, Griever—all the things that set him apart from that _other _Squall she had seen in the nightmare. All the things that told her that _this _was reality, and not the dream. So few things that could separate the two images—not the eyes, or the voice, or the way he looked at her now. Those were all the same. The same as the Squall who had taken her life…or had _given _her death. "But it seemed so… It felt…_real._"

"I know," he answered softly, gently brushing tears from her cheeks. "…I know."

"What…what _was _that, Squall? That wasn't…it wasn't 'just a dream.'"

"I don't know." Sighing, Squall looked past her, out the window, into the black sky and Balamb Garden's humming rings that glowed through the foggy universe outside. He stared out into the sea of grey, still trying to shake the dream. "…It felt like it really happened."

"What…what if it did?" Rinoa hardly dared the question.

He looked away from the window, searching Rinoa's face. "What do you mean_?_"

"If it wasn't a dream, then what _was _it?"

"It was…" Squall hesitated, then managed the answer he had, for an instant, been more than ready to give, before he'd had the chance to think about it. "...a memory." His hand went to his forehead, which he leaned into his palm, squinting with the effort of justifying to himself this thought. _That's stupid. A memory? How is that possible…?_

            A hurricane of conflicting thoughts and emotions roiled inside him, and he made no effort to mask his brief turmoil. It all boiled down to one unspoken pledge: '_I'd never do that.' _Taking her hand, he pressed it against his chest, over his heart, which still pulsed anxiously with adrenaline. "I feel it, too. It's still there…it's still in me. It's not fading away, Rinoa. It's not like a dream."

            "Squall…" Rinoa lowered her gaze to her hand, clasped beneath his. "I can still think the way she thought, if I try. I know everything about her. What she felt, it's almost like… Squall! If that's true…it really…happened. You…" Trembling, Rinoa tried her best to collect herself, but only managed tears. She pulled her hands away, putting them to her face, hiding her grief from his eyes that could see through to her soul. "I just can't stand it. It's so horrible…" She let her shoulders, suddenly heavy with a massive burden of half-beliefs, lean into Squall's side, their weight becoming his load to carry. 

She knew he felt helpless to console her, and was relieved that he found the courage to try. He brought her near to him, walling her in from the terrors of the outside. For a time, her fears were eased in a bed of soft flame within her heart. Her soul rested. But only for a time.

            "If it was a memory," she muttered quietly, "what could it be? A past life?"

            "Another reality?" Squall suggested. "If it was in the past, wouldn't Galbarira be recorded somewhere? I've never heard of it. And it sounds a lot like 'Galbadia.'"

            "You know what—I don't actually care, right now." Rinoa nuzzled in the arch of Squall's neck, again closing her eyes to speculation. "I just want everything to be okay. But…there's a part of me that still thinks like Riona. Like an afterimage."

            "What does that part think?"

            "She…she wants to…talk to…'Squall.'" She said his name awkwardly, uncertain if it was him she was truly speaking of. "More than anything. It…she knows what happened to him. She wanted to find him. Or, I wanted to find you—oh, it's so confusing!" 

            Gently, Squall pushed Rinoa back, just enough so he could see her face to face. His eyes impassive, he blinked once, slowly; his way of getting her attention so that she would listen to him without interrupting. "If it was a memory, then that would mean you and I have met…" His eyes narrowed in somber thought. _Before…_

            "And here we are," Rinoa concluded, her mind still taking in this new shock that she could barely fathom, but could not disbelieve. "We're here. And we remember. How?"

            Squall searched Rinoa's teary countenance for confirmation of his own feelings, but he had no answers. "We both know I'd never…" He shook his head instead of uttering aloud a crime he felt in his heart was his own. "And you'd never wish suicide like that." Though he did his best to pretend nonchalance, the dream had left him shaken and frightened. The haunting, primal fears and emotions of the Squall in his memory still crawled chillingly under his skin. He could remember that Squall's cold, one-sided logic, his disregard for human life. Even the lust for blood still teased the back of his senses with devilish insistence, though he was far stronger to stand against it than he had been in his nightmare.

            Squall tried and failed to force back a notion that had been waiting to surface. _If we are the same people…and I… _Like a man who had killed for the first time in his life, he stared down at his hands, half-expecting to see them still stained with Riona's—Rinoa's—blood. That was another oddity, the difference in her name. It was slight, but noticeable. His name had remained unaltered. And in the depths of his soul…had he remained equally unchanged? _If it's real…what have I done! _He looked up from his empty hands to find Rinoa watching him. His eyes begged her forgiveness. "Rinoa…I'm—" 

            "Don't."

            He stopped, mouth still half-open, and his breath escaped him in a wordless rush. Rinoa reached out to him, placing her hand over his. Her narrow eyes had become suddenly commanding, and her firm grip on his hand, fingers winding between his, forbade him to argue with her. 

            "Don't you dare be sorry."

Squall knew without question that Riona and Rinoa were one and the same. He still remembered the "dream Squall's" emotions for Riona—so identical to what he felt as Rinoa hugged him, now, the feelings could not be for anyone else. The love was pure, unchanged and undiminished, now or as it had been in the dream.

But what he had done in the dream as a result of this feeling—! It was _almost _unthinkable. But not quite. Perhaps that was the disturbing part. 

Placed in the same situation, with the same lack of knowledge, the same mindsets, experiences, it would have happened all over again. Squall was certain of it.

            _So one way or another…that person is me. Somehow, all of that happened. If it didn't, it would have. _He shivered, bowing his head and resting his brow against hers, staring distantly into her dark eyes to seek calm in her soul. 

Reluctantly, gently, Squall eased Rinoa down, and she waited until he'd pulled the covers over her shoulders and laid down beside her to speak again. 

"Maybe we can talk to Edea," she suggested, "or Cid…it may be important."

            "Probably." 

Rinoa barely heard him, but gratefully took the offered refuge of his arms, cuddling as close to him as she could. "I don't want to go back to sleep."

"I love you," he murmured, breathlessly. "I can't apologize for that…or take back any mistakes it might cause me to make." Squall closed his eyes, concentrating on her arms around him and willing himself to relax. For a moment, his mind turned desperately back to the persona of his dream, seeking the darker perspective, the mind that had fallen into welcome sleep just as he had awakened from a haunting nightmare. "I…I found you, again," Squall whispered tonelessly. "If this is real…if any of it is."

Rinoa sighed, letting his voice lull her heavy heart. She was afraid to close her eyes, so vivid was the memory of watching from some unnamed place while the Galleon tore Squall apart. She cowered close to his chest, staring fearfully at the talisman of Griever, which rested, jaws open in its everlasting roar, beside her on the pillow.

"I know who I am…" _Nothing will hurt you._ Breathing deeply, Squall threaded his fingers through Rinoa's black hair, stroking the strands gently. He searched himself for courage, and found it, deep within the love that continued to surge inside his heart, fueled by the memory of his greatest crime. "Don't be afraid."

Her eyes drifted shut, remembering the words from the dream.

_'Don't be afraid.'_

The voice, the words, were the same.

Suddenly unafraid, Rinoa let her consciousness go, falling once more into peaceful sleep in the arms of her beloved killer. 


	2. Reality Check Bounces

**Note: **About the character, Jorge—please do not mistake his manner of speaking for a condescending stereotype. FF8 featured English, Japanese, Latin, and French, as well as incorporating elements of various other cultures (Kiros' attire being of particular note) in its ethnic spectrum. When I thought up Jorge, Squall's gunblade student, I decided to try adding a little additional depth to his character by making Spanish his first language. As someone who took only two years of high-school Spanish, I have very limited knowledge of the language, and Jorge's linguistic nuances are based largely off what I have been able to glean from listening to the way Mexican-American kids in high-school talk. That being said, Jorge's character is still developing, and, due my decided lack of knowledge on the subject of Spanish, I may make some major errors in his dialogue and the inflections in his English. For this, I sincerely apologize. I hope no one takes offense in light of my own ignorance.

II

Reality Check Bounces

--

_"I want to see you clearly_

_Come closer than this_

_But all I remember are_

_the dreams in the mist..."_

--

"That's it," Squall finished, setting his half-finished glass of ice water down on the black-topped coffee table in front of him. "That's all."

The 'Administrative Recreation Center'—or, as it was more commonly and less formally known, the Teacher's Lounge—floated in weighty silence. The sofas surrounding the coffee table in the center of the room were mostly empty, having only four occupants; Squall and Rinoa sat directly across from Edea and Headmaster Cid, who was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together, his bristly chin cradled thoughtfully between his thumbs.

"What does it mean…?" Quistis, the only other person in the room, turned away from the window, though which she had been watching the all-encompassing grey cloud roil and twist. 

Two days before, on their way to pick up some passengers from the port city of Dollet, Balamb Garden had become enveloped in a sudden cloud of grey mist. The Garden, though insisting it was still in motion, had never reached the other side of the eerie, impenetrable vapor, and had not found land where land should have been. Squall, Xu and Cid had agreed to an all-stop until a way was found to cut through the oppressive fog.

Throughout the past day, the Garden had remained stationary, surrounded by thick, all-encompassing mist that did not actually appear to touch the mobile campus itself. Instead, it gummed the water, and perhaps the monstrous golden halo below, which was the Garden's main means of locomotion. All attempts to un-gum the mechanics had met with failure.

Squall had gone to bed that night, as had everyone else, frustrated and confused, with no answers. Now he was filled with only more questions. He waved his hand at Quistis' question, seeming unconcerned, although the same thoughts had nagged him without relent ever since he'd awoken from the violent phantasm. "Who knows? It might not mean anything. It may have something to do with this fog. It's been screwing with all the Garden's navigation systems." He looked out the window again, and this time Rinoa mirrored his example. "I don't know." Beyond the warm glow of the Garden's rings, entrapping mist as thick as smoke coiled and churned. Until now, nothing particularly unsettling had happened while Garden was mired in this strange phenomenon.  

"Then again, it might have nothing to do with it," Quistis countered gamely.

"And you are convinced," Edea put in before anyone else could speak, "that these dreams are memories of past lives?"

"They're memories of _something_." Restless, Squall stood up, walked away from the small gathering and stopped halfway to the opposite window. He turned on his heel to face them. His arm struck out at nothing. "No one else can think the way I do. It was a completely different situation, under different circumstances, but that guy was _me._"_ It wasn't someone else with my face pasted on. It was me…and it was real._ He relaxed again. His gaze drifted to the floor, and he shook his head, motioning loosely with the arm that had violently attacked the air only moments ago. "Of course I'd never do anything like that. Not now. I understand why I was that way at one time, though."

Quistis rolled her eyes, folded her arms, and gave him a skeptical stare. "There's no evidence that any of that ever happened. Galbarira? It's not even mentioned in any history that I have ever heard of. The way you described it, it was some sort of dark metropolis. The mind is an amazing thing. It's possible you just made the whole thing up."

"Look, I _know _what it was. I was there."

"How could you have the same names, same appearances, and same clothes thousands of years in the past?"

Squall growled in frustration, made as if to go over to Quistis, there to give a piece of his mind to her face. "You're not _getting _it—"

"All right!" Cid called an end to the escalating argument, holding up his hands and then motioning for each challenger to sit down. "Ladies…Gentlemen…please. Let's dispense with the philosophical speculation for now. What's important is that it has happened. Now," he continued before anyone could object, "I feel obligated to tell all of you that this is _not _an isolated incident. In the past two days, I have had six such reports from other officers and students, though none were as ready to go into the detail that was presented in this case. Four of these six described the experiences as memories of the past. Whether or not this is true, it started at about the same time that we became mired in this fog."

Squall waited to see if the headmaster would speak again. When Cid remained silent, the agitated SeeD took the opportunity to talk. "So the cloud and the dreams are related."

"May I say something?" Rinoa, who had been silent as stone until that moment, lifted her bowed head to stare hopefully at the headmaster. Cid waved for her to continue. "It sounds to me like there are two possibilities. Either the dreams are memories…which would mean the cloud is some kind of time distortion, or something…or they're not, which means the cloud is directly affecting our minds when we sleep."

"Possibly when we're awake, as well," Quistis pointed out gravely.

Rinoa shook her head. "Before anyone says it, I don't think it's a weapon of any kind. I don't know why I think that, it's just…a feeling."

"Some sort of gateway?" Squall suggested. "A 'leftover' from Ultimecia's time compression, maybe."

Edea nodded. "For that matter, could it _be _Ultimecia, in a former attempt at time travel in the future?" She paused as she realized just how contradictory the whole sentence had been. "Or, something that she created that was already there, but we happened to miss until now, perhaps?" She sighed, her eyes darkening at the ominous nature of this worn-out subject. Even after her defeat, it seemed that Ultimecia was a common suspect these days.

"I still don't see any evidence that these dreams are in any way connected to actual events of the past." Quistis, frustrated, leered across the room at Squall. "There's not enough information to even make an assumption in that direction."

"There's not enough information to make an assumption either way," Squall returned.

"Agreed," Cid grunted. "Let's not make any judgements until we're clear on the facts at hand. We have time, fortunately, and I do not see that there is any immediate danger to anyone in the Garden. For now, you will all go on with your schedules, with an emphasis: gather as much information as you can. Talk to your friends. Send out notices to all officers and senior students. Encourage people to talk about this. I do not want mass hysteria to form as a result of a lack of information. The more we know about this, the better we will be able to sort it all out."

"I'll set up a thread in the Garden Square explaining it," Rinoa volunteered. "A lot of people sign on between classes."

"Fine idea." With effort, Cid stood up, wincing as his knees cracked. The headmaster glanced about apologetically, rubbing his head in embarrassment. "I'm getting too old for this." But he was smiling as he said it. 

Edea stood up beside him, smiling as well. "When I hear someone call you 'grouchy old man,' I'll let you know." 

Everyone laughed, with the exception of Squall, who smiled despite himself. It was a welcome relief to the tension that had built up in he room since they'd come here. They might not always agree on things, he caught himself thinking, but in the end, they were all friends. "The day you become as tetchy as I am will be the day I switch mindsets with Laguna. I don't think you have anything to worry about." More laughter followed Squall's straight face, though he allowed himself an inward chuckle. _Maybe Laguna was a trigger-happy mass murderer in a past life._

Cid waved them all out the door. "Then let me be the party pooper. Come on, everybody out. We all have jobs to do."

A few more snickers, a couple of half-serious "yes, sir"s, and they all were filing out the door, bound for their respective posts: Rinoa had a history class; Squall needed to warm up before his morning training session with his gunblade student, Jorge; Quistis had sentry duty with Zell; Edea would be needed in the primary school classrooms, and the headmaster…well, only Cid knew what Cid had to do.

Rinoa's eyes were trained on the floor as she walked out. She hurried off toward her class, though Squall stopped her for long enough to make sure she would be all right. Reassured, he gave her a brief kiss and let her go on her way. He turned around to find Quistis staring at him. 

"If you want to argue about this whole dream thing, forget it," he warned her calmly. "I'm not gonna fight about it."

Quistis folded her arms in thought. "I don't want to argue, I just want to understand." Her eyes looked to the side, as if she found something about the wall keenly interesting. Her arms unfolded and motioned with increasing fervency as she spoke. "The person you described in your dream was a ruthless, bloodthirsty killer without a conscience. I've known you for years. I'm not Rinoa, but…I can't _fathom _that that person was _you._ There is nothing in you that would ever condone or delight in the vicious murder of innocent people! Not now, not ever." She crossed her arms again, this time seeming to hug herself for the secure warmth of confidence she did not feel. "I refuse to believe that _you _would ever sink that low. And what about Rinoa? She would never wish death on herself or anyone else. She would never just give up that easily. It's just not her."

Squall had listened patiently, and now he could understand why Quistis had been so stubborn before. He wished he could offer her some consolation. There was none. The hard truth was that someway, somehow, perhaps at some time, he was a cruel, violent, dangerous man with little if any value for human life. It had been a crude, simple mindset, one that had almost no concept of good and evil.

What had happened in the memory as a result of those factors was tragic, but Squall felt no pity for himself or for "Riona." They had both done the best that they knew how, and, given their circumstances, the ending to their story might even have been considered a happy one. However gruesome it seemed now, to them it had been precious and loving. It had been a primal, but twisted form of love. Still, not so complicated as what Squall now understood love to be.

Quistis was right, of course. There was no part of him that would ever allow him to intentionally harm Rinoa. Not anymore. He was wiser, stronger—but he and the Lion, leader of the Pride, were still one and the same. Fundamentally, there was no difference. "We all have our dark sides, Quistis," he answered finally, rather quietly. "Some of us are more ready to face them than others." Having nothing left to say, he waited for an answer, received none, and so walked past and down the corridor, leaving Quistis to brood in solitude. 

*

"You've been training with Seifer."

Squall glared over the top rim of his gunblade, slowly standing from his crouched defensive posture and lowering the point of his weapon to the ground in the same movement. He stood at the edge of an empty courtyard near the Garden's front entrance, and watched as his student of two years copied his example.

Jorge grinned sheepishly, crooking his arm and resting the dull upper edge of his own gunblade against his shoulder in a time-honored position he hoped would appease his instructor's obvious annoyance. "Just once, week ago, when 'e was here," the boy conceded, brushing sweat out of his thorny black bangs. "He taught me a coupl'a tricks."

Squall wasn't amused. He made a subtle show of his annoyance by checking his weapon, making sure all six bullets were properly seated. "We all make mistakes."

            Jorge shrugged and pretended to watch a non-existent bird fly by. "Said I should try them on you, see how is they work." He shot a slight smirk in Squall's general direction, though he didn't dare match stares with his teacher. "No say it was a complete mistake, eh? I su-prise you, yes?"

            "Yeah, you saved your own skin," Squall acknowledged reluctantly, but waved at Jorge with his free arm in a gesture of reprimand. "You also cut out too wide. If you'd been fighting in formation, you would've beheaded the rest of your squad." He allowed himself an internal grin of his own as Jorge's dark eyebrows shot up. He added ruthlessly, eyeing his shorter, lighter student with a slightly sideways, fully disapproving glower. "Believe me, that's not gonna look good on an exam report card."

            "Aww," Jorge protested, staring at the ground and trying to look as dejected as possible. "That's harsh. Give a guy a break, _si?_ No wrong to try something new."

            "It's wrong if it means a failing grade," Squall returned flatly. "Let's do this again. And keep both hands on the gun this time. No more Seifer stuff. If there's anything new, I wanna see it coming from your head, not his."

            Jorge's shoulders heaved in a massive sigh that seemed too big for the youth's lithe frame. "Yes, sir," he grumbled with little enthusiasm, giving the equally slim and light shear trigger a test swing before taking up a ready stance before his instructor once again.

            Three more heated sparring sessions followed. All of which Jorge lost. 

            Jorge finally called a rest, slouching miserably on a nearby bench. He cast a baleful scowl at Squall, the expression overcast by black hair dripping with sweat.

            Barely breathing hard, Squall met his student's stare without flinching. "Your balance is off," he commented. "You're putting too much weight on your right side."

            "I got hurt in the last one," complained Jorge, rubbing his left arm—his sword arm—and wincing in pain as he stretched it. "Hit the wall when you threw me, you saw it! Prob'ly got a bruise or something. It hurts to lean that way. Gimme a break, man."

Unmoved, Squall rested his weapon against his shoulder, his free hand on his hip. "Look, I'm not here to make you feel like a champ. If you're hurt, use a spell, fix the problem. Don't whine about it and expect me to feel sorry for you. You want my praise, you give me a reason to be impressed."

That was it. Jorge was _sick _and _tired_ of being belittled when he worked so _hard _to get it right. Squall's blatant disregard for his injury was just the excuse he needed to pop off, and boy, did he feel like popping off right now. He'd had enough. "You know, out of all the picky instructors in 'is place," he snapped, trying to think of the worst insult he could imagine to give a teacher, "you're the _worst_, man!"

To Jorge's astonishment and disappointment, the judgement didn't seem to phase Squall in the least. "I didn't ask to be here," he returned calmly. "If you don't wanna train with me, opt out. I've got nothin' to lose." He watched his student fume in silence for a while. Then, when it seemed the red color had mostly receded from Jorge's cheeks, offered a _slightly _more empathetic answer. "I don't like being critical of your form any more than you like being pissed on. So give me a reason not to do it."

"Aah—" Jorge shook his head and growled, standing up quickly and suddenly. He turned away from his instructor. _"Gustas…_" Dismissively, he waved his hand over his shoulder.

It was Squall's turn to frown and snarl. "What was that?"

Jorge spat contemptuously over his shoulder. "I say you _like _it, _esse._ You like to make people feel _stu_pid nex' to you."

"If you'd been listening…"

Squall didn't get a chance to finish. Jorge had turned around, was in his face (as much as a 5 ½-foot adolescent could get in Squall's face) and shouting so anyone who might have been nearby would surely hear. "I listen! I listen all the _time. _I try to do better, but it is not good enough for you. _Es nada. _Even when I try a new thing, and win, you say no. You trying to teach me to be as good as you, then do it!"

Squall sighed impatiently, folding his arms. It wouldn't do any good to try and interrupt Jorge's tirade. The best he could do now was just wait out the worst of the storm. 

"But I cannot be you," Jorge summed up, tossing his arms in the air and backing away. "Can't be 'Squall Leonhart_.' _Stop trying to make me beat you at your own game, man. It don't work that way."

Squall watched Jorge sit down again, watched him slouch on the bench, watched him pretend to have nothing left to say, watched the whole scene like a bad soap opera—with no interest and even a little disgust. He'd seen a lot of students do this kind of thing to their instructors, and what astonished him the most was how easily those "professional" SeeDs took their students' words personally and coddled their "cubs" until they stopped their wailing. But _he _made no excuses for his actions. Gunblade training was hard work. Squall had been no more demanding of Jorge than his own—now deceased—instructor had been of him. A child's temper-tantrum was not about to change the way he taught his own hard-earned profession. 

He did remember, however, that as hard as his instructor had been on him, for every point of criticism, there had also been one of compliment, however the critiques often outweighed the praise. It made sense. Squall knew better than anyone else what it was like to have one responsibility on top of another piled on one's shoulders and then have it all go wrong; it helped to know that, throughout all the mistakes, there was _something _that was being done right. Reflecting on the exchanges of the past few minutes, he supposed Jorge was entitled to the same encouragement. But he would not apologize. He was the Instructor, here, and there would be no question of that, whether Jorge liked it or not.

"I guess I'm not very good at giving compliments," he said at last, choosing his words carefully. "You need serious work in a lot of areas. I'll tell you something, though." He paused as Jorge glanced up at him. "If I was still your age, I wouldn't wanna meet you on the field."

The sour look on Jorge's face melted into one of surprise. "…You just saying that?"

Annoyed, Squall shot his student a savage, sideways look. "It that a real question?"

Jorge bit his lip, reanalyzing what he had just asked. "Guess it's not."

"You wouldn't be here, training with _me, _if you weren't good—the _best_." The Instructor gave the air to his side a short swipe. "I got my instructor's license because of you. You were so impressive down at Galbadia Garden, they wanted you to be a SeeD, and I'm the only one qualified to train you to do that."

Jorge's eyebrows shot up. "A SeeD?" He stared, dumbfounded, then finally managed a meek, daringly hopeful, "Think so?"

Squall narrowed his eyes, half-amused, half-exasperated that the boy had apparently not seriously considered the idea before. "Jorge, that's why people come here. Balamb Garden trains the elite. The things you've been learning from me and every other instructor are hard because I'm teaching you to fight like a SeeD, not a common mercenary. They transferred you here because they saw your potential, and knew if you ever wanted to be a SeeD as well as a gunblade artist, you'd have to start preparing now. You're fifteen. You've still got time…and you're getting the training you need, already. If you wanna go for it, it's not too late to tell them." He shrugged a little, adding, "The worst that can happen is you won't make it."

Jorge was silent, staring at the floor. For a brief time, Squall wondered if the boy had heard a single word of what he'd said.

"Even if you don't," the instructor muttered, trying to downplay his next admission, "you'd still be one of the most damn talented kids I've ever seen." Still, there was no answer from Jorge. Squall had just begun to wonder if he was getting the silent treatment when his student finally spoke again.

 "…Kin I ask you something?"

_Why not? At least you won't be telling me my job that way. _"What's that?"

"If I try now…" Jorge paused, as if considering carefully what he would say next. "I got five years to graduate for SeeD. Only, if I don' make it, will you still be my instructor?"

"…By then, I doubt you'll need me, anymore." _I hope you won't. _Squall strained to hear as Jorge mumbled something, only to realize the boy was speaking in his own language, which Squall was unfamiliar with. He tilted his head briefly to one side. "If you're talking to me, I can't understand anything you're saying."

At this, Jorge smiled a little. "Don't you SeeDs learn more dan one languages?"

"It's required that we're at least bilingual. I didn't learn yours, though. But see, you wouldn't even have to take another language course. You already qualify. That's one heavy obstacle out of your way."

The boy nodded slowly. "Know what," he blurted after a moment, "you better at compliments dan you think, Instructor. I bet you were a great teacher in a past life."

Squall was suddenly, eerily silent. _A…past life? _He had to remind himself, fervently, that Jorge did not know about the dream he had lived that past night. He couldn't know…and yet… _A great teacher. Maybe not at the time…but I understand things now that I didn't before last night. I guess it's true. We learn more by looking at ourselves in a different light than by quoting other people's petty mistakes._ For a moment—just a moment—he felt a twinge of guilt about berating Jorge about something as trivial as swordsmanship.

Jorge was sneering at him, increasingly uncomfortable under his instructor's blank stare. "What? Why you looking at me like that? Do I got food on my face or something?" He wiped at his cheek with one hand, then carefully examined his unsoiled fingers.

Squall continued to stare at his thoughts, unusually oblivious to the world around him.

"…'ey, Squall?"

Finally, the sound of his name bringing him to his senses, Squall shook off the dredges of a remembered nightmare. His answer was as blank as his expression had been only a moment ago. "…What."

"Did I say something wrong?"

Keeping his voice low to mask the sudden tremor assaulting his insides, Squall did his best to respond to a question that had no good answer. "No…no, it's just…" His hand went briefly to his forehead. "Maybe. Who cares?" He let his hand down again and matched his student's stare, his trademark scowl firmly back in place. "It doesn't matter." It was the easiest lie he'd told all year.

But Jorge continued to watch him keenly, as if suspecting his own teacher hadn't told him the whole truth. "Maybe a strange question, but…you get really messed up dreams at night?"

Squall's eyebrows shot up; he couldn't hide his surprise this time. "Lately?"

"Yes."

_So he's been having dreams, too. _Squall closed his eyes, thinking. _Maybe that's why he's been so distracted today. Probably trying to figure out what it all means—damn it, why didn't I say something! _"Yeah," was all he said. "I'm not the only one, either."

Jorge's next blunt question confirmed Squall's assumption, and suddenly brought their unspoken understanding of the conversation to a more personal level. "You think they are true?"

"…I don't know." Squall glanced surreptitiously at the wall. "Feels like it, though."

"Who knows," Jorge mused, sounding oddly wistful, "maybe it's us in the dream right now, and what _looks _like a dream," he added pointedly, his eyes never once straying from his instructor's, "is what is real."

Squall tried not to let himself shiver, even as Jorge's words sent a terrible chill crawling up his spine. _Please…don't say things like that. _"Who knows," he echoed tonelessly. Another round of uneasy quiet spent staring at his student convinced him that this training session was over. "All right," he sighed, sounding unusually resigned. "Practice is over. Go on, get outta here." He waved Jorge away, himself turning to walk slowly toward the bench at the opposite edge of the square yard. 

Stunned, Jorge stood confused, uncertain if his instructor was serious, almost unwilling to dare that he was. But Squall was not given to random jokes, and as he watched the SeeD lean his weapon against the bench and ease himself down to sit on the cold, flat wood, Jorge realized something had utterly shocked his teacher. It was obvious in the blind expression on the SeeD's face—Jorge doubted Squall even noticed the fact his student hadn't left as ordered—and the deliberate, awkward way in which the man leaned his face into his hands. It was a very stark contrast to the cool, fluid aura Squall normally exuded. Jorge couldn't begin to guess what it was he had done to cause what he was seeing. 

For some reason, what he was seeing terrified him.

Spooked, confused, and having no more desire to remain under the shadow of the swirling grey skies, Jorge hefted his gunblade and quickly departed the courtyard, wondering all the while if what he had just witnessed was indeed nothing more than a dream.

*

Rinoa stood in the center of the largest grassy lawn of the Quad, staring up at the sky. She looked straight into the murky grey, filling her sight with the mist, forgetting the Garden around her or the ground she stood upon. 

In her hand, she held the two rings she always wore about her neck. In the three years since Ultimecia's defeat, she had never once taken off the precious decoration. Now her fingers closed around it, chain and all, and her eyes closed in tandem, to better concentrate on how the cold metal warmed quickly in her grasp. 

She'd been considering dropping the necklace in the grass, just to see what it would feel like to do so. She decided in that moment she would not let go of it. Though Rinoa was not one to attach too much meaning to mere objects, Squall's ring had been a gift of life to her, and in wearing it, somehow, she had felt safe, watched over by a power stronger than any Guardian Force. 

In the terrible dream she and Squall had shared, Griever had been completely absent. The talisman of strength and courage had been removed from that hopeless world.

But the love, the sensation of completion that Riona had felt when she died, had come to her nonetheless. Without reminders, or symbols, and in whatever hideous form it had shown itself, love had taken them both, without encouragement, without help. 

Without looking away from the mass of grey, Rinoa put the necklace back on, sighing in relief as the familiar weight settled comfortably just below her neck. Taking it off had not been as difficult as she had thought it would, though it made her feel naked and unprotected, letting the wind chill an empty ring about her throat like a collar of restraining steel. But her feelings for Squall did not change with the removal of the necklace. If anything, the feeling in her heart grew stronger, and she _felt _that much more connected to him, once she had stood with the two rings resting side-by-side in the palm of her hand. 

But she would never be so heartless as to drop the rings at her feet, intentionally. To do so would show too much disrespect for a love that had grown so deep, so dear, and so increasingly strong, over time. For a time, before Ultimecia's threat had been destroyed, Rinoa had wondered if her feelings for Squall would ever change, if their relationship would last beyond the desperate time that had brought them together. The very idea that it might not had brought her close to heartbreak time and again. She'd seen "perfect" couples wither and fall apart before, heard about tragic stories of love that, once having seemed so real, crumbled within its foundations and separated people in gradual, torturous collapse. 

But that had not happened between her and Squall. She'd often wondered why. They certainly weren't "perfect" for each other; they disagreed on many things, and were no strangers to arguments and squabbles. Squall was often sent on missions away from Garden, sometimes for weeks at a time, and it was rare that Rinoa was allowed to come with him, and it was hard to wait for him to come home to her. She had friends, at Garden, and had just finished high-school classes. She was thinking about what kind of college classes she wanted to take. Angelo, though he was not a puppy any longer, had no shortage of energy. It wasn't like she had nothing to do. Even given this fact, though, it was hard to be away from Squall for any long period of time, and the loneliness she suffered when he was away had often been the most difficult aspect of staying with him. But, thinking about it, not even this painful fact seemed to matter, in the end. He suffered as much as she did when he was away, and alongside his frequent absences, there were just as many grateful reunions.

She believed she had an answer for herself, now. In a strange, almost disturbing way, the dream had made sense of it, for her. Even as Riona, she had loved Squall—and the Squall she had known in the dream was very little like the Squall she knew now. Ruthless, bloodthirsty, cruelly calculating. But under all that, was something else…a part of him she had somehow seen…that had captured her heart like nothing else in that nightmarish life ever had. She'd become so entangled in the need to be near his heart, semantics had become meaningless. When she had realized he felt the same love for her, she'd accepted it in an instant, despite what it would mean, never minding that he was so twisted inside, his best and only way to express his love for her was though blood and death. Regardless of who he was, or what he had done, Riona had loved him, and while she loathed his way of life, it had been her honor to let him give her everything he had…and even been surprised to experience the softest, sweetest death she could ever have imagined. 

What he had become was not important. She needed no reasons to love him. He was Squall, and that was all that mattered to her. 

Regardless of where he went or who he was, everything Squall did, said and thought was a source of wonder to Rinoa, and that she knew he felt the same for her both baffled her and filled her with joy. Again she clasped the rings that hung from their steel chain, and finally looked away from the sky, to the pure green grass of the recreation yard. She had donned, once again, the blue outfit she had used throughout most of their quest to destroy Ultimecia. It was even more comfortable than she remembered it, worn and faded though it had become. Once cheerfully blue as the summer sky, it was now a light blue-grey, and looked closer in color to the mist that surrounded the Garden than the brilliant hue of the noontime heavens, the likes of which she had not seen in almost three days, now. 

She sighed, fidgeting. She was older than she used to be, almost twenty. Squall had crossed that milestone already. In some ways, Rinoa felt older than she was. In others, she still felt like she was seventeen. So much had happened to her in that year, she was nearly certain the mindset would never completely leave her. For this, she was grateful. She never wanted to grow up, at least not in the sense that she lost sight of love, and the joy of life. She'd seen it happen to so many people.

_I believed in love, and I have it…I don't want to grow up, so I haven't…can it really be that simple?_

Slowly, she sat down in the soft grass, pulling her legs up to her chest, leaning back to gaze out into the fog. Giant wisps of ethereal grey curled and turned in chainlike patterns, intangible manacles wrapped around her incarcerated home.

_There are a lot of other things I have, too, that I never wanted. I didn't ask to be a sorceress…_

Even now, Rinoa retained Ultimecia's power, even if she was free of the evil woman's influence. She had great power, well beyond even the extremes that Edea's strength had reached—Rinoa had received not only Ultimecia's share of Hyne's embodiment, but also Adel's and Edea's. As far as she knew, she was the only sorceress left in the world, at the moment. She didn't know of any others. She didn't always like it; though she'd become relatively used to the idea, her powers set her apart from other people, and the term "Hyne's Descendent" was one she despised, for it placed her on a supernatural pedestal that was far too high for comfort. It wasn't that she didn't accept the responsibility that came with her abilities. She could work with that. But reverence was not something she responded well to. She didn't like the idea that someone else might consider her above them.

Squall had never seemed to be affected by her in any such way—he, too, placed no political barriers between himself and his love—and the rest of Rinoa's friends had eventually gotten used to the idea, and no longer treated her with the "extra" respect they had first responded with when she had become a sorceress. She was particularly close to Quistis and Xu, and though she was not a SeeD, they recognized that she had talents, and those two were always the first to suggest her involvement in a project if it was relevant to her knowledge of Galbadia or sorceress abilities.

She watched a curl of mist tickle the edge of a sycamore sapling that had recently been planted on the end of the yard, near the fenced off edge of the Quad. She wondered how Selphie and Irvine were doing. They had gone back to Trabia Garden to help rebuild the campus. The last Rinoa had heard, there had been a possibility that the mutilated, comparatively small Garden might even still be airworthy, as the underground mechanisms of the shelter had sustained little damage from the otherwise terrible wrath of Galbadia's guided missile barrage. That had been a year ago. She wondered if anyone from Trabia Garden had been dispatched to look for them. It had been two days since they were supposed to arrive in Dollet's port. Surely someone had noticed their absence by now.

Resting her head on her knees, Rinoa smiled, letting her dark hair fall across her face, obscuring her vision of the impregnable mist. _I'll bet Zone is having a fit of nausea, if he's heard about this. It would be just the kind of thing that would worry him sick. _

She sat up straighter when she sensed someone behind her, releasing her knees and leaning back on her hands, looking over her shoulder and directing her warm smile at her visitor. "Hi," she said simply.

Squall nodded in acknowledgement, and walked to stand over her, beside her. He returned her stare for a time, then looked off into the grey, in the same direction she had been. The gentle wind blew his copper hair back over his ears as his icy gaze pierced the murky air. "See something?" was all he asked.

Rinoa lowered her eyes to her knees, shaking her head. "No," she said, not unhappily. "Just thinking. Mostly about you." Smiling again, she looked up to see if her words had brought any reaction from him.

A _very _slight smile tugged at the corner of Squall's lips, and he glanced at her.

Rinoa smirked and gave herself a point. Getting Squall to smile had become her personal little game. One that, if she really tried, she could score quite high on. "What have you been doing?" She asked nonchalantly, slowly standing up and dusting herself off. She reached for Squall's hand, pulling close to his side as he turned his head to look down at her.

He answered with equal detachment. "I talked to Xu and Nida. They haven't had any dreams, but they're both convinced that this cloud is what is immobilizing the Garden. It's generating some kind of static field that's disrupting all the systems. Whatever it is, it could be affecting us, too. Jorge, though…" He stopped. He said nothing more.

"I see." Hugging his arm, Rinoa used her weight to tug him discreetly toward her, giving him the option of either facing her or being forced to stand crookedly where he was. "I took that PR intro class you suggested, today. It was kind of fun. I liked it."

Trying hard not to smile, he turned toward her, resting his hands on her shoulders as he faced her. "I thought you might."

"Oh? How'd you know?"

"Because I hated that class." This time he did break a real smile, and this slight expression remained on his face, not too pronounced. "And I had to take the whole course."

Rinoa gave herself two points.

She giggled, smiling widely. "I guess that would be a dead giveaway, wouldn't it?" 

_Don't tell me you were standing out here in the cold with shorts on just to wait for me to come give you a report of my day's activities. _Squall's smile took on an almost sad quality to it, as he brushed her windblown hair back into place. "My turn to ask questions."

Rinoa's smile faded a little, but didn't disappear. She knew Squall was trying to avoid some particular subject. She also knew better than to corner him into talking about it. He'd speak his mind when he was ready. "Already told you. I was thinking about you…mostly about the dream," she admitted. "Squall, am I going crazy? I'm actually starting to feel better about the whole thing… The more I think about it, the more I wonder if it really wasn't such a terrible thing, after all?" Anxious, she searched his blue eyes, seeking within his soul for understanding.

Understanding wasn't far away. "It's not crazy." His voice was lowered, but still clear to her, as the conversation became more personal. "I feel the same way." Gently, his hand slid past her shoulder, his fingers touched the side of her neck—exactly where he had made the first fatal cut in her flesh. 

Rinoa shuddered and closed her eyes, chilled by the memory, while at the same time not wanting his touch to leave her. For an instant, the moment returned to her in full clarity, and she wrapped her arms around his middle, slipping her hands beneath his jacket as she had in the dream. The sensation was the same, the warmth of the embrace, which he returned, was just as precious, as it had been in the nightmare. With her eyes closed, the air so cold and Squall's presence so near, she might have wondered if she wasn't back in the alleys again, and any moment, he would draw the knife from his belt and begin his soft ritual of death.

Squall held her strongly and started stroking her hair, an action that discerned this reality from the one they had known for the weeks that had taken place last night. He thought hard for something, some words to say, and could come up with only three: "Don't be afraid." 

This time, she answered, stared up at him as tears began to form in her dark eyes. "I won't be. I can never be afraid…of you."

Darkness started to become more prevalent in the lonely yard, painting the clouds a bloody tinge as the sun settled into the horizon beyond the ominous mist of dreams. In the shadows the wisps cast on the Garden's brighter majesty, Squall pulled Rinoa closer, kissing her long and full, as slowly, as gently as he had cut her. 

Even after their lips parted, they stood still and silent in each other's arms, waiting for as long as death had taken to come, for the final darkness released by the setting sun.

  
*   
Can't sleep… 

He tossed and rolled and shifted in bed—or, rather, _on _it, as he hadn't bothered to get under the covers. He'd known from the moment his conversation with Jorge had ended that he wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. At Rinoa's urging, he'd gone through all the rituals—cleaned up, dressed for bed, settled down—but nothing had been able to ease his mind to restfulness. And nothing was going to. His runaway thoughts had seen to that. 

While Rinoa had already slipped off into slumber, Squall waited guardedly for something to happen, demonic fears clawing at his heart. _Things like that don't just happen. Something had to cause it. Maybe it will happen again tonight…_ He did not want to return to the cold alleys, the dark heart of the killer he might once have been. He was very comfortable where he was, here, in Garden, with Rinoa. He wanted nothing else. No other life could replace this one. And there was always that lingering doubt that if he dreamed his way into another life again, he would never awaken from it, no matter how terrible it might be. 

He growled softly, folding his arms behind his head as if it would somehow make his pillow more comfortable. He remembered a time not so long ago, when he'd had similar fears plague him every night. He used to tremble in his bed at night, horrified by a notion that endured beyond all reason, the fear bordering on phobia that death would come upon him in his slumber, the only time he was completely helpless to fight it. It was an irrational, unshakable night terror that had often visited him, having shadowed him since he was a small child. In recent years, the fear had not been as prevalent, its visits becoming more and more infrequent. He knew that this was due largely to Rinoa; for whenever he woke in the night, soaked in his sweat, shaking from the insidious chill that only paralyzing terror can inflict, she would be there; holding him, rocking him, whispering to him her love, that everything would be all right and the darkness coming for him was only a horrible, meaningless dream. Now, it was not death he feared, but another life that was and yet was not his own.

Now, more than ever, he wished he knew the difference between the dream and reality.

He looked at his bedside clock. It was past midnight. Still seven more hours until he was supposed to get up. He wanted to do something to distract him from his thoughts, while away the idleness of the night in the training center or patrolling the Garden's many outdoor walkways and breezeways. But he would not leave Rinoa alone here. Not tonight. _Too many possibilities. There's too much that could go on without my being here._

He rolled onto his side, deciding to spend his time watching her sleep. He could sense no distress from her now, only the numbness of sleep and the blessed release of meaningless, _normal _dreams that he could not see, and doubted he could make sense of them if he could. 

Despite their intimate bond, it was a rare and unpredictable privilege for Squall and Rinoa to dream together. Neither of them had any clue how to control the phenomenon, though they had noticed it tended to happen when one or both of them was in deep need of comfort or closeness. Perhaps it was the heart's way of reaching out to its mate when the mind was not conscious to tell it otherwise. Who could say? All Squall knew was that, up until now, those few and cherished dreams they shared had been wondrous things, full of happiness and free of fear.

He supposed it was just as well they should be together in a nightmare such as the one they had lived. Squall wasn't certain he would have been able to look on the "memory" in such a positive light, had Rinoa—Riona—been absent. 

He slammed his eyes shut, but his attempts to block the images of that dark past only served to bring them further to light. It was not the reality of the dream that had him so unnerved; it was the possibility that he might be doomed to relive it over and over again. Enlightening as it had been, once was enough. He did not want to become the dream's prisoner. Sucking a painful breath into his constricted chest, he pushed himself into a sitting position, looked around the shadowed room, desperate for an escape from the awful scenes that would not stop replaying themselves for his mind's eye. He needed something he could stare at, something that would ground him to this place, this boring room, this coveted universe.

Or…is it all a dream? 

Squall got up, scolding himself for being so foolish. If this was a dream, he wouldn't remember the _other _dream. He wouldn't even be thinking about dreams. If this was a dream, it should all seem perfectly normal to him…

He stalked into the small bathroom, switching on the dim mirror light and tossing a quick glance behind him to be sure the weak glow did not wake Rinoa. She remained where she was, sound asleep. He turned his attention back to the bathroom counter. 

_This is pointless, _he grumbled internally as he stared at the sink. _It's like contemplating nonexistence. The idea is freaky as hell, but when you think about it, if it really came true, you wouldn't notice or care, because you wouldn't be aware of what you were missing._ His jaw clenched, Squall reached for the sink knob, fully intent on turning on the flow and splashing the cold water on his face, which felt strangely numb. He needed a shock, something to yank him out of his entangled thoughts and back into a rational frame of mind. 

He missed. His fingers closed around thin air. Muttering a curse, embarrassed at himself for misjudging the short distance, Squall gave his hand a single, rough shake and reached for the knob again. Again, he missed. Snarling, wondering just how unnerved he must be to continue to fumble with something as simple as a cold water knob, he rubbed his eyes and reached for the elusive handle one more time. He stopped, halfway there, staring at his arm.

The dark brown sleeve of his leather jacket clothed his arm. A quick glance at himself confirmed that he was indeed wearing the jacket, along with the rest of his work clothes. Squall stared at himself for a moment. He thought he had changed into his night clothes just a short while ago. Sighing, he let his arms down by his sides, grumbling unintelligibly at himself. Was he so shaken by this whole situation that he was putting on the wrong clothes? He allowed himself a cynical cough of a laugh. If he wasn't careful, he'd show up at Cid's office tomorrow morning decked out in his pajamas. He looked up at his reflection, shaking his head in amused disapproval at his backward apparition. 

His head stopped swaying, his faint smirk faded as he stared at himself in the mirror, stricken. And the worst part was that he could not feel his heart pounding in his ears as it should have been. Breathless, silent, he stood like an upright corpse, unable to comprehend what his eyes were telling him.

His scar was gone.

Looking back at him was a face he did not recognize. Unscathed, smooth skin was the only thing gracing the space between his eyebrows. The angry rip that had split his forehead and left his face forever scarred, had vanished like it never existed. He put a halting hand to the unmarred flesh, running his fingers over his brow, pressing hard against the skin as if he could rub off the paint that might have covered the old wound. But there was nothing on his face. No scar, no makeup—he could not even feel the invisible indentation Seifer's blade had left in his skull. 

What the hell? 

The words came belatedly to him. It had taken as long for him to regain enough presence of mind to accomplish a coherent thought. Squall spun around, darting back into the bedroom. Rinoa was still in bed, still sleeping. She had not moved since he had last checked on her. 

He could not help himself anymore. He stormed up to the foot of the bed. "What the _hell _is going on?!"

His outburst had the intended effect of waking Rinoa up. Moaning softly in protest as her mind dragged her out of sleep, she turned onto her back and sat half-way up. She pushed sleep-disheveled black hair from her eyes and blinked a few times, glaring at Squall in the too-bright aura of the meager bathroom light. "Squall?,"  she hailed him softly. She yawned, trying without much success to banish the sleepy slur in her voice. "'S everything okay?"

_No, _he thought to her, watching her frown at this answer. "Tell me something," he hissed, not giving her the chance to tell him to go back to bed. "Where are we? Where is Garden?"

The sleepy sorceress rubbed her eyes with one arm. "I…don't know. Why are you asking me? We're in that cloud, right? No one knows where we are."

Squall's next words died in his throat. Dumbly, he wavered in place, feeling dizzy. He gestured unsteadily in the general direction of the window. "W-wait," he stammered, "…the cloud? You remember that?"

"Of course I do. What's wrong?" Having mostly thrown off her grogginess in response to the urgency in his voice, Rinoa sat up completely, resting her hands in her lap. She watched him expectantly, worried. "Have you figured something out?"

"No, I—I don't _know._" Chaos and frustration reigning over his thoughts, his desperation for an answer growing ever stronger, Squall walked quickly to her side of the bed, kneeling by the bedside as she slid her feet out over the edge. "Look at my face," he whispered as she met his plaintive blue stare. "Do you see what I saw when I looked in the mirror? Do you _see _it?"

Pushing away another intrusive lock of tangled hair, Rinoa stared at him for a few moments. Then she shrugged. "I don't understand. See _what?_"

"The scar!" Squall actually laughed; she was still so tired, she could not even pick up on the obvious absence of any mark on his face. "It's gone. I looked in the mirror, and it was…" His voice faded and he trailed off. His mouth simply stopped working. For a moment, he stopped heeding his thoughts, turned his attention inward, taking in Rinoa's emotions. He didn't understand what he was feeling from her. She was perplexed, worried, skeptical…

The running confusion in his head ground to a screeching halt as he realized Rinoa didn't have a clue what he was talking about. 

"_What _scar? …Squall?"

He shook his head slowly, standing up with the same deliberate pace. He backed away from her, stopping just before he hit the wall. He sneered at her, unsure she was who she appeared to be.

Rinoa stood and stepped toward him, disturbed by what she was seeing and feeling from her knight. She stopped just in front of him, holding up her hands in a gesture of calm. "Settle down. I just didn't understand you the first time. Start over."

Squall did settle down, but it was a forced calm he did not feel. He stared into Rinoa's eyes, hard to see in the shadow. He narrowed his own, feeling a familiar coldness creep around his soul, walling up his heart, preparing him to think his next thought, while at the same time doing his best to shield it from the one person in the universe he could have hoped would understand it. He barely managed to swallow once as he realized that, this time, she would not understand. She wasn't even…

_Real. This isn't real._

It was a dream. This wasn't the Rinoa he knew.

But she was. She had to be, if this dream was anything like the last. She was here, she was the same. But for some reason, _he _realized that it was a dream, while she hadn't the faintest idea. 

"I know you don't understand," he murmured finally, glancing around the room, noting with curiosity that the walls had grown red wallpaper, and that his gunblade case was mounted on the wall like a plaque, rather than leaning against it as should have been the case. "But…whatever Squall you're used to, isn't here anymore." His lower jaw trembled as he said this. He resisted the urge to press himself flat against the window behind him. He wasn't sure how Rinoa—as she was now—would react to his cryptic declaration. The Rinoa _he _knew would have been horrified.

"What are you _talking _about?" Confused, obviously frightened and beginning to get angry amidst her frustration, _this _Rinoa scowled at him and poked questingly at his closed mind. "What do you mean you're not here anymore? Here you are." She gestured at the floor he stood upon. 

Skeptical, impatient, demanding. Squall raised an eyebrow; she sounded like _him._

He set his jaw, trying to think of a way to explain what he meant to her. He could think of only one way, but it would mean opening his thoughts up to a Rinoa he wasn't even certain he knew. _But I do know her, _he reminded himself. _Fundamentally…she's the same person. She would understand if I showed her…_ He closed his eyes, knowing that _she _knew he was talking to himself and thankful that she was letting him do it. _Just…let her feel what I'm feeling. That's…that's simple enough, isn't it?_

An apologetic expression flitted past his face as he opened his mind to her again, projecting his confusion, the knowledge about their situation he held that Rinoa was so oblivious to. Calming somewhat, he put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

And passed right through her. 

  
* 

Rinoa jerked away just as his hand brushed her, but could not completely avoid the tips of her knight's intangible fingers. She shivered, clutching her hand to her shoulder, even as Squall stiffened and stared at it in astonishment.

            "I _thought _we agreed you wouldn't do that," she murmured, more surprised than angry. She bowed her chin into her chest and hugged herself for warmth and comfort. Squall had since stopped gawking at his hand, and had taken to staring at her. Uncomfortable under his gaze and upset by his actions, Rinoa inched away from him. Her rising fear was plain in her tremulous voice. "Squall…Squall, what is it?"

He was watching her steadily, glassy shock mingled with unfamiliar concern in this strangely intense look he was giving her. Softly, in a voice she could only describe as gentle, he whispered, "I can't touch you." He said the words as if he'd never said them before. She stared at him oddly. Had she not known better, she would have thought he was on some mind-addling drug. It was strange, facing him just now. The way he was looking at her reminded her of some time in the past, but she couldn't recall exactly when. She saw a reservoir of ice in his eyes, barely managing to hold back a fiery flood of emotion. It was almost…

She drew in a gasp, terrible fear crashing down upon her like so much debris. Shuddering, she barely had the chance to see the ice dam crack and split before she was swept up in the tide of Squall's rush of raw terror. With a small cry, she fell to the floor before him, drowning in the rapid current of his pain.

Squall knelt beside her, made as if to reach out to her, then stopped. _No… _She heard his thoughts whisper through the roar of the flood. In the room, there was along, dead pause. In her heart, Rinoa struggled to gain her footing in the emotional undertow. Finally managing to right herself amidst the confusion, she concentrated for a moment, closed her eyes, and forcibly diverted the river of fear. 

The painful tide receded. Her mind went silent.

She knelt on the floor, gulping air, her heart pounding so fast and so hard she feared it might burst at any moment. Through it all, Squall stayed beside her, mute. She finally managed to raise her head enough to frown angrily at him, her heart swelling with sadness and shock at his betrayal.

But he _still _acted as if he did not understand what he had done wrong. "Rinoa," he murmured, shaking his head slowly. She could tell from his eyes that the current of his emotions had not eased. "Tell me what I'm feeling from you isn't real."

It was too much. How could he be _doing _this to her? She stood up slowly, shaking, both from anger and from the trauma in her fear-saturated soul. "What an insensitive thing to say!" she hissed. "Of _course _it's real—"

"No, no _NO!"_ Squall—or was it Squall? She wasn't sure anymore—stood up suddenly, striking out at the air in a futile attempt to push it out of his way, uncover whatever truth it was he was seeking. Shaking visibly, he came to within inches of her face, backing her further against the edge of the bed until she was forced to sit down or touch him. She fell onto the mattress, both angry and terrified. What was happening? Why was he acting like this? "_Tell _me," he demanded, his voice having been so plaintive and frightened just a moment ago, now was a commanding roar tainted with desperation, "why I have no scar. Tell me why I can't touch you. _All _of it—!" He hung over her, more enraged than Rinoa had ever seen him.

With no more than a sharp sweep of her arm and a whispered word, she threw him hard against the window.

The impact would likely have killed most human beings. Squall slammed back-first against the thick, steely glass, his head snapped against the cold surface with a thunder-like _crack. _But, defying the laws of physics, the window did not shatter. Squall fell into a pitiful heap on the floor, trembling, groaning…and visibly unharmed.

Rinoa stood up slowly, and approached him with as much care. He remained on the floor before her, his head down, shaking uncontrollably. She crouched beside him, treating him as she would a wounded animal; moving slowly, quietly, not daring to touch. She noticed with a hint of surprise that he had not allowed himself to fall flat on his face. As painful as it obviously was for him, he barely kept himself propped up with one arm. Even through the blockade she had put up around herself to ward off his overwhelming emotions, she could still feel the passionate heat pouring out from his soul, recognized anger, fear, pain and disbelief. But what shocked her most of all was the defiant way he had combined all of these feelings and used them to give him strength, to keep himself from collapsing. 

She struggled to put a name to the sum of what she was seeing. The only word that came to her mind, was _courage._

_Tell me, _she heard his voice in her mind. She swallowed a painful lump forming in her throat; even this voice carried unparalleled pain, the agony of one whose soul has been wounded. _Please tell me, Rinoa. Tell me who I am._

The Sorceress shivered and clasped her hands in her lap, lest they tremble with the rest of her. She fought for control over her emotions, her expression darkening until it seemed her eyes could be no blacker. "You poor thing," she murmured, the astonishment and compassion in her voice belying her stony expression. "You really don't know."

Squall said nothing. He was using every ounce of his strength simply to keep from falling to the floor.

Rinoa drew in a long breath. She didn't know how what was happening was possible. She could not remember the last time she had felt such burning emotions from Squall. Not since…

_Is it true? Has he forgotten everything? Maybe the cloud has something to do with it… _"Squall…" she hesitated. How to say it? "Squall, you can't touch me, because…you're not really here." 

She choked back a tear, forced her face to remain steady as her knight barely managed to lift his head enough to match her cold stare with one of his own—one that, had Rinoa not seen it with her own eyes, she could not have believed he was capable of. Trapped in the chill of his gaze and shaken by the intensity of his burning emotions, she made herself pour out the rest of her explanation, though her eyes did not once spill a drop. She intoned his fate as one would speak a capital verdict:

"You died, three years ago, fighting Ultimecia in time compression."


	3. Love Without Scars

III

Love Without Scars

--

_"You are just an image; you are not for real_

_You've turned into a picture of somebody_

_Someone I don't know; someone I don't feel…"_

_--_

Squall wondered for a heartbreaking moment if he hadn't truly died and gone to hell in this accursed cloud.

Willing himself out of despair, his soul still trembling from the blow it had suffered, he fought to retain a semblance of composure as he stared vacantly at his sorceress. He succeeded only in scowling at her. This was just as well; at least his expression reflected his feelings.

"I don't know about a scar," Rinoa was saying, her taut voice balancing a shaky tightrope between compassion and concrete. "But…since it happened, I'm the only person who can see you."

His mind rummaged through a heap of dusty memories, trying to recall any part of his fight with Ultimecia that might explain what was happening. He remembered numerous times, the terrible sorceress had entrapped his soul and tried to seduce him into giving up and becoming her unwilling knight. Obviously, since he had died in that battle, but was still bound to Rinoa as he was in the "real" world he remembered, he had become Rinoa's knight instead somewhere along the way. It couldn't have happened after his death. _Which means…in this dream, it happened either before or during our fight with Ultimecia. _And he could think of a hundred different ways it could have been the latter. Finally able to raise himself to a kneeling position, he nodded in reserved acknowledgement. "…Because you're a sorceress," he appended Rinoa's account, carefully dressing the statement with a plaintive inflection that begged her to explain further.

He felt her mind dance around a painful memory. Squall sighed as he waited and watched Rinoa attempt to simplify a story that obviously hurt her to recollect in full detail. "Before you…" She hesitated, and frowned at him, sensing his impatience, and seeming rather annoyed by it. She challenged his glare with one of her own—which, while not as practiced, was no less fierce. "Before you died, you came to me, and—"

He could guess what came next. "Asked to be your knight."

Rinoa stepped back a pace, closing her mouth. She actually looked relieved. "You do remember…"

"_No._" Leaning his unscarred foreheadinto his hand, Squall used his free hand to push himself over and sit against the wall—how odd that he wasn't passing through it, like he was passing through everything else. "I…I do remember. But _not like this._" He dug his fingers under his hair, at a loss to explain. "It's not supposed to be _like this!_"

 "Calm down," commanded the Rinoa who wasn't. "What is it supposed to be like?"

Squall swallowed a caustic retort. Why was _she _telling him to calm down? She wasn't the one stuck in an unfamiliar illusion. Forcing himself to curb his annoyance for now, he did his best to try and answer Un-Rinoa. "I don't know. I just know that this is _wrong!_' His fist came away from his head, slamming down on an imaginary object in front of him. He put every ounce of confidence he possessed into his answer—no matter how skeptical this Rinoa was, he would at least make her understand that he believed every word he was saying. "I should be alive, and…and this sorceress and knight thing shouldn't have happened until a _year _after Ultimecia was gone!"

UnRinoa had meanwhile risen to her feet and had taken to pacing a straight line down the center of the room. She stopped midway to the other wall and half turned, aiming a _very _dubious look at the 'ghost' sitting below the window. "'Gone?'" She appeared to keep herself from nervous laughter. "Squall, what are you talking about?"

In spite of his allegedly lifeless status, Squall felt his mouth go dry. Cautiously, he stood up, using the wall to support his quasi-existent body. "…You mean she's still around?" His frustration had abruptly taken a back seat; all he cared about now was learning everything he could about this dream—another nightmare, to be certain.

Making a visible attempt to subdue her own frustration, Rinoa clasped her hands behind her, dipping her chin until it almost touched her chest. Her sleep-crimped hair painted her brow with uneven shadows, eyes growing dim as she spoke. The tone was easily recognizable to Squall as one of practiced, insincere calm. "You really are stuck out there in the Twilight Zone, aren't you?"

_No kidding. _Squall was silent for a long time, thinking, but he let his thoughts be easily heard, if Rinoa chose to listen. _But which 'out there' is the dream? _Was it really here, in this reality, or was he still sleeping in the Garden? _The one _I _remember? _Dazed and speechless, having been startled too many times in a row to even begin to get his bearings in this place, he resorted to hiding his eyes behind the palm of his hand again. _Ultimecia? Here? _He remembered Edea mentioning her possible involvement in the creation of this temporal cloud—if that's what it was. But if it wasn't a "time cloud," then what was it? A dimensional rift? What if it wasn't so much time they were dealing with, but possibilities? Was this world of the present just one possibility out of millions? Could the sorceress have found a way to alter reality, switch dimensions until she found one that was in her favor? 

He dismissed the idea quickly. If Ultimecia had ever possessed that power, she would never have bothered with time travel in the first place. Not to mention, the last dream they'd been stuck in had _obviously _been set in some past time. There was no proof of that, but Squall knew it in his soul, as did everyone else who had experienced dreams that night. This dream was different. It did not have the flavor of a memory. It _felt _like the present. But if Ultimecia was still alive in this dream… 

_This isn't real, _he reminded himself. _Whatever I see here…it's all a dream._ _I'm not really dead and Ultimecia is gone. Just focus on finding out what's going on…I'll find out as much as I can about this. Maybe there's a way to wake myself up, and Rinoa, too._

When he finally spoke, he had calmed down enough to keep his voice low. "You remember the other dream…?"

Rinoa nodded slowly, jaded. "Yes."

"Then," he continued, "would you believe me if I told you that this is also a dream?"

She rolled her eyes. "I believe _you're _dreaming. I'm completely awake and aware, thank you."

This brought about another long silence. Squall hadn't considered this possibility—quite likely because he hadn't wanted to. _But that would mean that everything I remember…might not exist at all._ He stared at Rinoa, wishing she would open up to his emotions, that he could show her how terrified he was that everything he knew, everything he loved and cared for, was gone. If she had lost the Squall she knew, he had lost everything with the exception of himself—and, perhaps, her. But the door remained closed. She did not want to know what he was feeling. The Rinoa he knew would have embraced his soul. Not this cold war they were currently engaged in. 

But which memory was real?_ How do I know who's dreaming, and who's still awake? How do I know what's real anymore? _

Resigning himself to the fact he couldn't answer those questions immediately, Squall did his best to reign in his panic. "Fine," he consented, albeit irritably and with a slight tremble in his voice. "Maybe I am. So…tell me about all this. If I'm a…_ghost_, how do I walk on the floor? Why don't I fall through it? I go through everything else. Why did I hit the window when you pushed me?"

"You're still bound to me," the closed sorceress murmured, sounding as though she'd recited this litany a thousand times already, "and so to the living world. You don't pass through everything…" She shrugged. "I don't know why. We've never been able to figure that out."

It was a start. "You were surprised when I tried to touch you." He held his hand out toward her—for what reason, he wasn't sure, and it didn't matter if she interpreted the motion as entreaty, truce, surrender, or simply him beseeching her understanding; either way, she would have been right. "You got angry," he went on, his voice softening. "Why?"

Thunder rumbled, not outside, or anywhere near the forbidding cloud, but inside Rinoa's mind as she fought to retain a vacant image of self-control. She made no move to take his offered hand but sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, leaning forward and bowing her head until Squall could no longer see her eyes. She curled her fingers into claws, pressing the palms of her hands hard into her knees. Her back stiffened and she shivered as if by a sharp pain. Then, slowly, she began to relax again, but when she finally inclined her head enough for Squall to see her face, unwilling tears had breached even her well-guarded walls. 

"…I can't stand it," she whispered. The pain in her voice and eyes further choked his silent heart. "You're…you're half-there, Squall. I can see you, I can hear you…but I can't touch you."

Squall wanted desperately to hold her in that moment. He wanted to go to her, gather her in his arms and clutch her tight. Whenever something hurt her so terribly, in the past he had been there to warm her in his arms and let her listen to the strength of his heartbeat. Physical love was a means of reminding each other what they had together; now he could not touch her. He had no warmth to lend her, no heart for her to listen to. The only comfort he had the ability to give was his presence, and Rinoa seemed armored to it. 

If only he had fallen asleep tonight, or kept Rinoa awake with him. Perhaps then they would be in this together, instead of fighting each other. Or had he fallen asleep, and simply not remembered it? Regardless, there was no way around what was happening, and Squall had to live with Rinoa as she appeared to him now. Even if this was a dream, her feelings were real. _And so are mine. _ "It's all right," he said quietly, and shuffled his posture nervously. "I understand." He decided to change the subject. "What about Ultimecia? What happened when we fought her?"

Wrong question. Rinoa snapped, spitting one of her own. It was more a demand than a query: "Why are you _doing _this! _Why _are you making me relive this? Do you think it's _funny? _You big _jerk!_" The wetness in her eyes suddenly began to smolder.

Squall shook his head, stepping back, stung. His lips parted, but he had no words to answer her; he watched her cry, at a total loss for what to do or say. "Rinoa…" 

She turned her back on him. Why was he doing this? Couldn't he see it was hurting her? What was this ridiculous game he was playing? She hadn't the strength or the wisdom to handle it at a time like this. Rinoa pulled her feet up onto the bed, scooting closer to the pillows. Laying down, she wrapped her arms around one and let her silent tears slide into its cotton folds. 

She wished he would go away. This was too much. Why was he bringing this up now? He'd said he was not the Squall she knew. What did that mean? Had the dream changed his outlook on his own sorry existence? Surely he didn't _believe _any of it to be true! Even if the dream _had _been real at one point in history, she didn't have time to waste contemplating or discussing a past gone wrong. 

Squall was dead. He was gone. He could not help her anymore. She was alone.

Alone, in an empty room.

_Please leave._

A ghostly chill brushed Rinoa's shoulder. Crying out in surprise and fright, she rolled away, sitting up and glaring into what should have been lifeless air. Her angry, tearful frown hardened to razor steel. Squall stood frozen in mid-motion, obviously startled, a childishly dumb expression on his face. His fingertips hovered over where she had lain. She scolded him like a boy who had just gotten caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Squall! I _told _you not to do that! Now _please, _just do as I say! Stop this. Leave me alone. This isn't getting us anywhere."

Squall stood straighter, regaining his composure. He retracted his hand and regarded her darkly. "I can't let you lie there and try to convince yourself that I'm not real."

She forced back a sob, torn between laughing and breaking down in tears. "What else can I _do? _You wake me up and start telling me all these things. Telling me that my life is a dream—what is that going to do? Is it supposed to make me feel better? Then you…you _can't _just get that close. We talked about this years ago."

"No," Squall dissented quietly, firmly. "Rinoa, we didn't."

"And now _you're _talking like this," she carried on as though he hadn't spoken, "trying to carry on a conversation like we're old friends sitting in a coffee shop."

"That's strange to you?" Squall's stolid expression did not change.

Rinoa looked as though it was the last question she had ever expected him to ask. "Of course it's strange, Squall. What do you expect? You haven't said a _single _word to me in five months!"

Squall sighed, looking off to the side. Her behavior was starting to make a little more sense, now. If, in this reality, or dream—whatever it was—his death had torn them apart even as their bond had kept them together, he could understand why she was so furious. Seeing the person you loved, but not being able to touch them? He was beginning to realize just how heart-numbing that concept was. He closed his eyes for a minute, imagined how Rinoa would react to such a situation. He knew she could deal with losing a loved one better than he could. But having one as an intangible familiar? Being haunted day and night by the someone you could never touch, no matter how badly you wanted to? That was part of Rinoa's vision of Hell on Earth. Still…it wasn't like her to try and break all contact with someone she cared so deeply for. She was a loyal friend to begin with. She would not simply abandon a person who needed her.

Not unless they had abandoned her, first. 

Squall was instantly reminded of Rinoa's unenviable relationship with her father. His eyelids parted slightly as he stared into space. _He's the only person she's completely given up on. And he gave her good reason to. Damn… _He looked at her again, his eyes smoky with anxious guilt. _What have I done to make her want me to stay away? _"A long time ago," he mused aloud, doing his best to hide the fact that what he was about to recollect added up to nothing more than educated guesswork, "I agreed I would never try to touch you. It…bothers you. It reminds you of what I can't give you. I haven't said anything to you in five months. …Is that right?" When she said nothing to refute his hypothesis, he chanced a question. "Even after we had The Dream?"

"…What's left to say?" 

Folding his arms, Squall tried to fathom what was going on here. What could possibly have happened to form a rift like this between them? Questions, questions, so many questions he had to ask in order to understand, but because of the person he was _supposed _to be, he couldn't pose any of them. 

Letting his arms by his sides again, he took a deep, if unnecessary breath, deciding to try statements instead of questions. "…Sorry." He shook his head at the lameness of the apology. "I never meant any harm. I'm… I'm not feeling like myself, right now." It wasn't a lie. "If it hurts too much to tell me, I'll stop asking. I just wish I had the answers."

She watched his apparition for a moment, smacking her tears with the sleeve of her red nightgown. "You really want to talk to me…?" 

He inclined his head slightly to one side. "If that's all right with you."

Rinoa motioned for him to sit down.

Testing the bed to make sure it wasn't just another object he'd fall right through (what a cruel joke that would have been—!), Squall carefully sat down, not too close to her. The fabric felt real enough to him, but he noticed that his weight did not disturb the shape of the mattress at all. He made not so much as an indentation in the pliant cushioning. Doing his best to ignore it, he leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, and stared at Rinoa sideways. "So I'm dead," he rumbled, one side of his face twitching slightly in what might have been a smirk.

Rinoa saw no humor in his redundancy. "As opposed to…?"

"_Not _dead." Disappointed in the poor direction this conversation was once again taking, Squall stared malevolently at the floor. _This is really screwed up, _he caught himself thinking."It isn't supposed to be this way. Not for me…"

"…Not even Simone?" 

Rinoa spoke in a dark but gentle voice, as though to a child who had yet to understand a very complex subject. It seemed his behavior was unsurprising to her, yet it hurt her deeply. Squall felt instantly that he was being tested, and he fixed his "teacher" with an incredulous stare. "Who's Simone?" he asked warily, uncertain he wanted to know the answer. His mind came up with several terrible possibilities. A girlfriend of his? A casualty? Someone he allowed to die? Or live? Someone they had failed? He couldn't think of anyone he knew (in "real" life) by that name. But Rinoa derailed his runaway train of thought before he could fathom the true answer for himself. 

"Your _daughter._"

Squall forgot to breathe. Not that he needed to, anyway.

Thunderstruck for the fourth or fifth time—he'd lost count at this point—he stayed unnaturally still, gazing dumbly at some sort of nothing that existed in Rinoa's general direction. _My… _Stuck on a broken mental record, he spent the next minute struggling to vocalize some sort of response."…_What?"_ Was the best he came up with.

"Your daughter," Rinoa repeated quietly. "_Our _daughter. Her name is Simone. She's almost two years old."

Squall's mind chose that instant to reboot. A million questions clamored at the front of his thoughts, all screaming to be heard, pushing and shoving. He and Rinoa had a child? What did she look like? When did it happen? Who did she resemble most closely? What was her favorite color—

Squall cut off the stampede of emotions and questions thundering in his head, resolving to sort through them and choose the most logical one before he said anything. What surprised him the most was how pointless some of the most pressing thoughts were; what was her favorite color? It seemed like such a meaningless detail. But he wanted to know. His feelings about this dream had been grossly contorted once again. Finding out more about the history of this reality suddenly seemed far less important. 

He finally made a decision on his question. "I thought you just said I was _dead._ How can—"

Rinoa cut him off sharply, clearly losing her patience with his ignorance. "A long _time _ago, Squall. The night before we fought Ultimecia in her castle…you don't even remember _that?_"

Squall said nothing. He didn't remember.

"What's wrong with you? Why are you so silent all of a sudden?"

"I'm _thinking!_" Having been loaded down with a thousand different surprises, more shocked and wounded with every new presented fact, Squall raised his voice in self-defense. "I can't answer everything right away!"

Momentarily stunned, Rinoa then pretended apathy, folding her arms and waiting with impatient patience as Squall thought about what he would say. 

_Oh, man…this _can't _be real. A kid? What was I _thinking_ in this reality! _Squall stood up and turned toward the window, staring out into the churning darkness. He forced himself not to cringe at the mere thought of having to deal with a wild 2-year old running amok, making messes, screaming at the top of her lungs. He doubted he would make a good parent. He didn't like kids. He didn't know how to talk to them, couldn't identify with them. He never had. Even when he was one, himself. He'd explained this to Rinoa before. What good was he as a father? Or, for that matter, a dead one?

Could this child have been the eye of this stormy relationship?

He turned on his heel, again assaulting the air with his arm. "Rinoa, please, you _have _to tell me what's going on. I'm serious. I don't know what you're talking about. I'll go crazy if I can't understand what's happening to me." He lowered his voice and eased his tone when she began to frown angrily at him. "Please," he repeated, staring at the dresser drawers to avoid being pinned by her scowl. "I'm asking you because…_I don't remember._"  He paused, waiting for her to say something. No answer. She was closed to him, so he couldn't tell what was going through her mind. He suspected it wasn't anything overly pleasant. "You know what I'm thinking," he offered resignedly after a long silence. "…Am I lying to you?"

Rinoa did not answer right away. She stood up and walked quietly to the hallway door. Stopping in front of it, she looked over her shoulder at him. Her dark eyes had lost all hint of skepticism; they had lost all hint of anything at all. "Take a walk with me." The words were gentle. It was the first thing she had told him to do that was not a direct command.

Squall remembered the first time she asked him to go on a walk, and wondered if that had even happened in this world. In this case, he put up no resistance. "…Alright." Cautiously, he walked to stand by her side. 

The door slid open. Together, they stepped into the dark corridors of an unknown universe.

  
* 

Throughout their 'walk,' Squall remained tactfully close to Rinoa without actually touching her. They strode slowly through the long, straight dormitory hallways with nothing but memory to light their way. Rinoa made no indication that her knight's proximity bothered her as long as there was no physical contact with his image. 

But Squall's condition was starting to get to _him;_ no matter how close he got to her, he could not feel her body heat, and the smells he normally associated with her—something as simple as the conditioner she used on her hair—were undetectable. He could not smell anything, in fact, not even the cozy scent of the autumnal dorms. Nor could he feel anything in the way of temperature; he was neither cold nor hot, nor anything in between. These senses were dead to him. He could only see and hear, and according to what Rinoa had told him, only because his soul was bound to her in death as well as in life. The invisible barrier between them was torturous. He felt like he was trapped inside a glass display case. 

He had the key, but the lock was on the other side.

Maybe over time, he thought, he might be able to work that key through to her, if he could make a crack in the door. "How did we get here?" he asked quietly once they had cleared the dorms and passed into the breezeway that led to the adjoining main floor. 

Rinoa's response was even quieter. She did not look at him. "Here, as in what?"

"The cloud," Squall clarified. "The way it happened is probably different from what I remember."

"It just showed up. We were on our way to Galbadia to defend it from an Estharian invasion."

Squall nodded sagely. If he was dead, Ultimecia was alive, and Rinoa had a child, anything was possible. Nothing, he resolved, would surprise him at this point. "So we're allies with Galbadia," he postulated. "And Esthar is our enemy. Ultimecia's doing?"

"Right…" Rinoa winced at the sound of the woman's name.

"Tell me more."

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything." Squall checked his frustration at her evasiveness, somehow managing to turn what would have been an angry growl into a gentle rumble in the back of his throat. "If I haven't talked to you in five months, I wanna make that up to you now. If you have anything to say, I'll listen."

Rinoa snorted disdainfully. "Big change of heart. When did _that _happen?"

"About three years ago," he answered honestly. "Not long after I met you."

Rinoa rolled her eyes as they entered the main dome, veering off to the side and following the left banister along the path. "How pretty," she muttered, her tone thick with sarcasm. She continued in a mocking voice, "'My whole life changed the day I met you.' Great line, very original." She scowled at the floor in front of her and walked a little faster. "The way you say it, you'd think you invented it."

Squall's irritation got the better of him just then. Snarling, he overtook her in a few strides, made as if to block her path. "Just a _damn _minute—" Anything else he'd been about to say failed on the edge of his tongue; she walked right through him. For a moment, staring after her, he was too stunned to speak. But the shock didn't last long. Squaring his jaw, he moved after her again. _This 'dead' thing is starting to piss me off._

He caught up with her and paced along by her side, defying her silent attempts to discourage further conversation. "I'm very serious," he said to the side of her face. He kept at it while she pretended to ignore him, "and I think you know it, but you don't wanna talk to the person who ruined your life." He kept pace with her as she slowed down, but did not stop. "That's fine. You don't have to answer. Just listen." He walked easily alongside her now, kept his eyes on her even as she refused to look at him. "To me, this is a dream, just like the one we had last night. Maybe this reality is the one that's real, and the one I remember is a dream, but I don't think so. You can believe whatever you want. But since you won't tell me what happened here, I'm gonna tell you what I remember." He hesitated, waiting from a reaction from her—anything—but Rinoa just kept walking, past the parking lot, past the training center. 

Once near its entrance, she made a beeline for the library. 

"In the world I know," Squall began, trying his best to adequately sum up the past three years of his life in a few sentences, "I met you when you came here to request assistance from SeeD for a guerrilla mission against Galbadia's occupation of Timber. I was assigned to help you carry out that mission. It failed, but you and I and a group of others got caught up in a fight to save our world from Ultimecia. We went through a lot together…I never wanted a relationship, but you understood me and talked to me in a way no one else has ever been able to. When we went to fight Ultimecia in Time Compression, _we _kept each other going, and _we _defeated her. You, Zell, Irvine, Quistis, Selphie…all of you kept me going. I survived. We've been together ever since. A year after Ultimecia's defeat, after a _lot _of talking and thinking about it, we became sorceress and knight of our own choice. We've been through some hard times together, even after the war with Ultimecia, but the _one _thing that's never changed is that we never gave up on each other." 

He stopped talking, stopped walking, as Rinoa came to a halt in the dead center of the unlit library. The tall, shadow-veiled bookshelves towered darkly overhead, menacing sentinels of silent knowledge standing at attention. To his recollection, Squall had been to the library after curfew only once before, and he had the same eerie feeling now as he had then—that the shelves had eyes, observing him from the cracked book spines and the crannies that separated the geology tomes from the history section. Under the scrutiny of so much wizened literature, he couldn't help but think the brief synopsis of his relationship with Rinoa had been trite and grossly inadequate; how did one explain the unexplainable? What had happened between himself and Rinoa was far greater than a simple relationship, and the victory against Ultimecia had involved far more than just friendship and perseverance. The more he thought about it, the more cheezy and idealistic his own anecdote sounded to him. He sighed at himself and the sheer ridiculousness of the whole situation. He could only hope that Rinoa was paying attention to his thoughts and knew that he wasn't just pulling it all out of his ass.

Rinoa had said nothing contrary to his claims. She stood with her back to him. Squall wished he could hear her thoughts and feel what was happening in her heart. But, save for himself, his mind was silent; his heart was empty. 

He closed his eyes, trying to weather the internal ache which, having been strong before, was growing more acute with each passing moment. He tried to lean against a bookshelf, but could not find purchase on the solid wood for his insubstantial shoulder. So instead he stood behind the woman he loved, powerless. _Please say something, _he begged her silently. _I'll do anything you ask…if you'll only talk to me, Rinoa!_ He waited in agony, unsure if his message had even reached her. He received no answer.

Shaking his head, backing away slowly as if from a horrifying monster, Squall stood weak-kneed, wishing for something to collapse into and knowing that every chair in the room would treat him the same as Rinoa had: as if he didn't exist at all. He had to settle for standing, shaking uncontrollably as his fear finally overcame his composure. He ran his hand across his unmarked forehead, teeth clenched. What had he done to make Rinoa despise him like this? He couldn't talk to her, couldn't _think _to her. He couldn't touch her, and only she could see him. She wasn't listening, or if she was, he could not tell. There was no love in this cold connection. Only anger and contempt over an unspoken crime. 

Squall was trapped between screaming his rage and breaking down in tears, but his heart was so constricted he could do neither. He could only cry out to the uncaring silence that he faced. _I know I've hurt you, but I don't know how. If I don't know what it is, how do I undo whatever I _did _in the first place! _He stared at her back, his gaze begging her absent eyes for forgiveness he knew she could not offer. He remembered a time that seemed distant to him now, when a young sorceress who had no knowledge of her own powers lay on an infirmary bed before him, cold and unresponsive to his voice or his touch. He felt the same now as he had then. But, as it had in the past, something urged him to stand taller and avoid falling to despair, even as everything else inside him warned he was on the verge of giving out. The soft whisper in his heart spoke louder than his screaming emotions; he obeyed love's ruthless command and steadied his shaking muscles. He could not afford to break now. If this world was the true reality, he had an unspeakable sin to atone for. If his memories were just a dream, he would never let go of that dream. It had taught him what real love could do. He trusted it now, as he had in the past he could not prove had ever existed. Faith was all he had left to hold onto. 

He closed his eyes. For all the world he believed in no gods, but he might as well have prayed his plea. 

_Rinoa…I _miss _you._

When he opened his eyes, Rinoa had turned around and was staring at him. Her eyes glistened, but she did not cry. Her palms were clasped in front of her lips. She had been waiting for him to come out of his trance. Once he did, she placed a few tentative steps in his direction. Her eyes came into the intermittent green glow of the hallway path light; so unremarkable in the daytime, it continued its never-ending trek to and fro along the hall, and now it was the only source of illumination in the library. Her expression flickering in and out of shadow, the first real hint of the Rinoa Squall knew stared back at her knight through the wall that separated them. 

            She leaned forward a little, as if to get a better look at him. She folded her hands behind her back. "In this life you remember," she said softly, "is Ultimecia gone? For sure?"

            Swallowing his heart, Squall nodded. "Completely gone. She'll never bother anyone again…not until the future she lived in comes to pass, anyway."

            The sorceress straightened. She stared at the floor. "How is that possible?"

            "We fought her, together…" Squall trailed off, finding it difficult to make himself recall the terrible ordeal in great detail. He hoped she would not drill him about the long, painful battle. Certain experiences, as far as he was concerned, were best left buried—remembering them could bring nothing but renewed suffering—but if particular facts were what Rinoa wanted, he was willing to supply them. Now was not a time to hold back anything. He finished strongly, the rumble returning to his voice. "She couldn't beat us because she couldn't _break _us." Remembering the nightmarish fight stirred a strong defiance in his eyes. His right hand balled into a fist at his side. "It's a long story." _If you want, I can tell you…but you might not like everything I have to say. _

Rinoa nodded for him to continue.

"…Are you gonna listen?"

Slowly, sagely, she nodded again.

For the first time since their conversation began, Squall was able to meet Rinoa's gaze and hold it for long enough to look deeply into her eyes. He could not hear her thoughts or feel her emotions, but he recognized the solemn expression she adopted when she realized she had been wrong. It did not happen often, but the look in her eyes—reluctantly accepting, but wide with apprehension as she waited for an amendment to her disproved opinion—was unmistakable. She was not looking for an argument this time. She was ready to hear him out. 

"You're right," he started, nodding once. "She did torture me. She even killed me, in a way. All of us…it wasn't just me. It didn't end like that, though. Just because you're dead in Time Compression doesn't mean you're gone, you're just…it's…very confusing." He snarled and looked away, studying one of the spying bookcases, frustrated with himself for not having the words to describe what had happened. _I can't explain it… _He mused silently, casting a thoughtful sideways scowl at Rinoa. She was still watching him, waiting patiently. _But maybe I don't have to._

"Well?" She urged him gently after a long wait. "You're thinking about something…what is it?"

After debating with himself a moment longer, Squall faced her again. "I can't say it in words. There _are _no words that can describe what happened. But I can _show _you…if you'll let me." His heart sank as he watched Rinoa's face harden into a cold frown. He closed his eyes, speaking softly. "I know it hurts you to feel what I feel. If you say no, I'll understand…but you'll never know what I know unless you say yes. I can't explain to you what happened. But I can tell you that it didn't turn out this way…I didn't die. You don't hate me. We're friends…and we _talk _to each other."

He opened his eyes again to find Rinoa thoughtfully pawing the floor with her left foot. As he watched, she wove a silent design with her toes, following a pattern only she could see. "I didn't say I hated you," she whispered finally. "I'm not sure I could do that. I've tried. It…it doesn't work. Even if I wanted to, I can't hate you."

Sighing, Squall counted his blessings and stepped a little closer, remaining just out of arms reach of Rinoa. He saw her shift her weight uncomfortably, and knew without having to know that she was fighting not to move. She hated to be _just _out of reach of something. He stood where he was and mentally pleaded with her. She would either back away or come closer. 

Eventually, after much apparent turmoil, she made the choice to step closer to him. Her hands remained folded behind her. "It's just that, everything you're saying…it's so unreal. I want to believe you, but how is it possible?"

Squall had a sudden vision of himself embracing her, whispering, "like this," ever so softly into her ear; a vision in which he was flesh and blood again and not this hollow image with no substance. But it was nothing more than that—a vision—and he shivered as it faded, a wish carried away on a breath of icy reality. "It's what I remember," he muttered weakly, having nothing better to say. "It's real to me."

"And this isn't?"

"This is, too." Squall rethought his words, deciding that trying to convince Rinoa her whole life was a falsehood would be just as impossible as trying to convince himself of the same thing. "But it's not what I remember."

Rinoa tilted her head slightly sideways, offering him the first smile he had seen on her face since the dream had begun. "Even memories are fickle here, remember?" She almost laughed at her own joke, but settled for a bitterly amused sigh. "We could be a couple of bats hanging from a cave ceiling, dreaming all of this."

            _The dream…_Squall's expression brightened suddenly. "What about…the dream? The Pride, the alleys…do you remember that?"

Her smile bent backward, Rinoa lowered her eyes to the floor as if ashamed. "…How could I forget?"

"Remember…what I said to you at the very end?"

"The end…" Rinoa said the words as if she had just closed the book on a long, tragic bedtime story. She said nothing else. After some time passed, she started walking, passing her silent knight with little more than a glance to indicate he should follow her.

They left the contingent of bookshelves to its lightless vigil, trudging toward the great circular path of the main hall. The same dark words echoed in both their minds, a haunting plea and vow from the vivid ghost of a dying man.

Wait for me! I'll be with you again, soon… 

For the moment, it seemed that was a promise yet to be upheld. 

  
* 

"Why haven't we talked for so long?" Squall paced slowly alongside Rinoa, watching her eyes pass through phases of dim light and utter darkness. The two of them walked along the inner edge of the main dome's artificial stream. The underwater lights, placed at intervals between each silent fish statue, cast forlorn wisps of yellow and pale green as Squall and Rinoa rounded the huge circular walkway for the fifth time. The fish fountains were pillars of darkness, throwing walls of shadow across the path every few meters. The lapping of the water against the sides of the river's manmade prison and the deep, distant rumble of the Garden's propulsion system was just enough to mask a whispered word. Perhaps that was why Rinoa had chosen to come here, Squall thought. They could not mumble to each other in this place. Whatever needed to be said, each of them must have the courage to say it loudly enough to be heard over the ambiance.

Rinoa took her time answering. Squall watched her eyes move from left to right and back again as she pondered his question. He doubted it was an easy one to answer, nor that the answer was simple. There was nothing—_nothing—_he could imagine that would ever prompt him to stop talking to Rinoa. Sometimes he spent long hours in silence with her, just thinking, but in the end if he had something to say, he would tell her. 

He'd ruled out the idea that she might have asked him to stop speaking to her. Firstly, Rinoa simply wouldn't do such a thing, interpersonal creature that she was, and secondly, she had seemed ultimately pleased that he had 'decided' to talk to her 'again.' Whatever had happened here, it had been his fault. No question of that. But damned if he could get her to talk about it. 

"You know," Rinoa started, and from her tone of voice alone, Squall knew she wasn't going to answer his question, "they say that if you're dreaming, you can control the dream once you realize it's a dream."

Squall nodded. He'd heard of this. "Yeah. It's called lucid dreaming." He paused, considering the concept for a moment, trying to understand what it had to do with their current dilemma. "So?" he asked finally.

"So…if this is a dream, why can't you control it?"

He faltered a little in his step, but managed to keep walking with her. He did not say anything. It was a question he hadn't been expecting, nor did he have an answer for it. True enough, he knew that this was a dream—so why _couldn't _he control it? _Unless…unless it _isn't _a dream! _

But it _had _to be! After all, he hadn't been able to control his "real" life, either—but then again, he had never given serious thought to the idea that his life could be a dream in the first place—or had he known, and been making up the whole thing without realizing it all along—

Squall stopped in mid-stride, snarling caustically as he mentally commanded his brain to just shut up. Brooding for so long, second-guessing his conclusions and then doubling back on each newfound theory, he felt a kind of cognitive giddiness coming over him. Searching for a definitive point to such a cornerless subject would only drive him mad. He resolved to stop thinking himself in circles before he got any dizzier. 

Rinoa had stopped also, and was watching him curiously. "What is it?" she asked.

Squall resisted the urge to say, 'nothing.' Instead he kept his mouth shut until he was able to collect himself enough to coherently speak his mind. "I'm not sure this is a dream."

"But it's not what you remember."

"…That's right." He folded his arms; he was afraid Rinoa had some dire point to make, as she had so many times in the past hour. 

She surprised him by smiling. "You used to get that look when you thought I was angry with you."

"What look?"

"You know, _that_ look." Rinoa mimicked his stance, arms crossed and feet planted, though she evidently couldn't find it in her to scowl as Squall was doing. She settled for a melodramatic imitation of his vexed expression. "The 'you're right, but I won't admit it' look."

Squall blinked, looking down at himself. "Yeah, you always like to make fun of me."

"At least the Me that you know and the Me that's here have _something _in common." Her smile softened. "And I think I believe you now. At least…I think _you _believe what you're saying."

Squall hadn't expected how relieved he would feel, just to hear her speak those words. He thought about doing many things in answer. He thought about apologizing for being the person he had been; but what apology could he make for a person he wasn't sure he even knew? He thought about telling her that from now on, things would be different between them, better than they had been; but that sounded like a lie any drunken wife-beater could conjure. He thought about telling her, yet again, that if only she would let him _show _her his memories, she would see that all he had been saying was indeed true; but if she could not come to trust him without proof, then she would never let him in. 

This last, cold fact hit him the hardest of all. When he and Rinoa had joined as Sorceress and Knight, bound their souls in a marriage so deep, so eternal, that no death could ever separate them, _trust _had been love's twin key; it had unlocked their spirits to each other, and then love had shackled them together, forever. Even in this reality, it had happened. But here, they had somehow lost the key of _trust _to a dark crevice. Finding it again was a feat Squall wasn't sure he knew how to accomplish. 

_I guess, _he mourned silently, _that's all part of the risk we took…that we might not be right. _He retreated a few steps into the shadow of one of the fountain fish, staring into his Sorceress' eyes even as he felt tears stinging his own. _We could be giving our souls forever to the wrong person…and if we're wrong, we'll suffer for it forever. We went into it, knowing that it could happen. We bet all or nothing, and what we got was _everything _and nothing at the same time. Everything we ever wanted…but no more second chances._ Shivering, he backed further into the shadow, bowing his head to stare at the floor. _I know what it's like to have someone love me, who I can trust, who will never leave no matter what. I know it's possible. Rinoa, there's nothing you could ever do that would change the way I feel. I could even forgive you if you betrayed me. It's like you said. There are no guarantees. I had to trust you even though I had no proof of anything I believed in. I accepted that, and I still do. We don't always see things the same, but we never question what we mean to each other, because in the end that's all that matters. I trust you, and in the world I knew, you trusted me, too…_ Blinking a lonely tear from his eye, he dared to look back to where Rinoa had stood moments ago, half-expecting her to have left. She had not. She was still staring at him, waiting._ This place…is this just the other face of the coin? Is this my dream, turned into my worst nightmare? What if neither of them is the truth? What if they both are?_

_What if they can be changed?_

            "Rinoa," he rasped from the shadows, the steady power of his voice masking the sorrow he felt in his soul, "I believe in what I've got. And right now…all I've got is you."

            Rinoa seemed a statue, lifeless as the fish that shaded her knight's forgotten tears. Staring straight ahead, her eyes were unfocused as though she was blind. "Don't you understand," she breathed, "I don't even have that anymore. Who I used to be doesn't exist anymore."

            Slowly, Squall nodded, though he knew she was not looking at him any longer. "I guess we do have something in common." _…We're both lost. _Squall shuddered, terrified of his own thoughts. It didn't matter. Just because Rinoa had given up hope did not mean he had to do the same. _Maybe we are lost…but that doesn't mean we can't find each other again. Rinoa, I wish you knew what I knew!_ In the thick of the hopelessness Rinoa was radiating, Squall remembered his dream, his life. Wandering for days in the landscape of his heart; desolate and without recollection of any joy. Alone, he had fallen. He had lost his love, and so lost himself. But she had found him again. And she had saved him, because she _believed_.

            Perhaps this time, it would be _his _place to save _her._         

            "I have another life, now," the sorceress chanted softly as though weaving a dark spell. "A life without you. I've learned to accept it. I…I'm all right on my own. I have to be. Simone doesn't have a father. She needs a mother." 

            Squall resisted the urge to clutch his own head in frustration. _'…all right on my own.' No, _no, _Rinoa! You don't know what you're _saying!"You lost something you loved," he rumbled from the shadows. "When you finally realized you were abandoned and _he _was never coming back, you turned your back on it so you could keep going, because you _had_ to. If you face the pain, it's too much to take and you can't be strong when everyone else is depending on your strength…especially Simone." He watched the distance clear from Rinoa's eyes, and stepped toward her, out of the darkness, so she could see he was looking at her as she focused on him. "In a world with Ultimecia, the kid needs _someone _to tell her everything's gonna be alright."

            It was the point on which Squall knew he differed from his sorceress. He probably would have tried to raise such a child on hard logic, to steel her against the difficult truths of the world; he didn't know any other way. Whereas Rinoa's only thought would be for the girl's comfort and safety. Still, it baffled him how she could have come to the same self-defeating impasse he had faced in his childhood. She believed the only way she could go on after such a terrible loss was to block him out completely. What on _earth _had he done to her? She was still the person he knew, unrestricted by the stiff statistical logic that Squall had always been prone to. She reacted first, asked questions later. She wasn't the brooding type. She wasn't about to run away from her fears…except...

Me. I left her…alone…

Again Squall's thoughts strayed to Rinoa's father. He remembered how spitefully she talked to General Caraway, how she turned her back on him and refused to speak whenever he brought up an old, long-decayed argument. She distanced herself from Caraway because she could not look at him without being assaulted by the disgust, the pity, rage and heartache. He had been no father to her, even when—in Rinoa's mind, at least—she had given him every chance to be. As a child, she had asked him to hold her, and he had not. She wanted to see the world, but he wanted her to stay home. She wanted friends, and he had told her she shouldn't fraternize with the likes of street kids. She'd wanted hugs for her birthday, and got pretty clothes instead. Clothes she never wore. She wanted to be herself. Her father wanted her to be a carbon copy of her mother. She'd wanted support, and found none. Her father had become an alien to her. So she left, and taught herself to hate him so the pain of his apathy would not wound her so terribly. In a fashion, she had done the same to a single person, what Squall had done to the world: shut them out forever.

Caraway's voice whispered to Squall's mind like a phantom breathing nightmares in his ear. _'Please…she is all I have.'_

_And I sound just like him._

Squall and Rinoa were wearing the same shocked expression by the time these thoughts had finished rushing through his head, and neither found the power to speak. Both looked dead standing up, eyes fixed on each other as if each was the monstrous cause of the other's demise. But for both of them, the horror was directed inward; for Squall, at the beast he had somehow become; for Rinoa, at the terrible things she had said to the ghost of a lost love who was turning out not to be so lost, after all. When the horror passed, the guilt sank in. Though they could not feel each other's emotions, for a time, they lived the same agony, each abandoned and alone, so close but never to touch.

            Squall hadn't noticed himself moving. He was standing in front of Rinoa, his hand outstretched as if to touch her face. He stopped himself only inches away; coming to his senses and remembering her request that he not touch her, and further realizing she had not moved away from him when he'd reached for her. In fact, judging from her position, she had moved in to meet him. But he had told her he would not touch her, and he would not break his word. He pulled away just in time, grasping his fist in his hand. Shaking, he backed away a painful step. "I'm…sorry," was all he could say, looking away at the shadows. "I'm sorry…Rinoa, I'm so sorry…"

He shook harder, his words gone from his lips. For a moment, he froze in place, a chill colder than death spreading through him like ice in his silent blood. When he regained the capacity for motion, he raised his eyes to see Rinoa directly in front of him, tears in her eyes. Her arm was outstretched, the tips of her fingers "resting" on what would be his shoulder, but to her was nothing more than thin air. Squall had the urge to look at her hand, but did not. He could not drag his eyes away from her face. Illuminated in the ethereal light of the stream, her tears hanging delicately from her eyelashes, she was at once the image of beauty and misery. Squall "felt" her hand move from his shoulder to his face, and wanted to lean into her, but he was riveted by her eyes. The chill in him grew stronger—such a terrible, dead chill, an internal cold unlike anything he had ever felt before. It was almost too powerful to stand. _This is…what she feels when I touch her. _He blinked gingerly in the glow of Her eyes, soaking up as much of the intense cold as he could, as though he could draw it away from her so she would feel it no more. He knew what he was experiencing was only a reflection of what she felt, but he could also feel her soul was nearby, hovering just on the fringes of his senses, circling him suspiciously as one would inspect a strange mechanism before daring to touch it. Her eyes blinked away the tears, watched his reaction. He stood still, just staring back, glancing every now and then at her hand, which had gone to his shoulder again.

Do you want to see her? 

Her gentle voice in his mind was so welcome, Squall had to swallow his heart just to answer without choking. "I would." He silently thanked her, thanked heaven, thanked everything in existence for this chance. He felt like falling over and crying like a child, but stayed motionless, reveling in this simple allowance—this _gift_—of allowing him to share her senses, hear her voice in his mind. She was looking into his eyes; he thought he saw her smile. Whether or not his vision deceived him, he smiled back. It would take time, but if there was just the smallest chance that he could begin to right what had gone wrong between them, he would not throw it away. _If you even believe me when I say I don't know what I've done to you…then tell me what I'm supposed to do to make up for it._

She blinked slowly. _Sometimes the only antidote comes from the poison itself._

As Squall watched, baffled by her cryptic answer, Rinoa smiled a genuine, beautiful smile. It made his soul leap with a giddiness he had not felt in what seemed like so long; the chance to make things better again, the possibility he could make up for all the times he had screwed up in the past, all the mistakes he had made that had led up to this terrible circumstance. Life had offered him his ticket to the stars, and his ship was waiting, if only he could find the courage to go the distance. But that had been in life. In death?

            Given the hopelessness of the universe around him, Squall could only just find it in his heart to believe.

            "Show me," he whispered. "I want to know what I've missed."

  
* 

            The room adjacent to Rinoa's quarters was half the size, but markedly brighter. The walls were the more generic, lightly tinted grey of the Garden, and there was a certain airy feel to the place; Squall had the mental impression of a kind of flowery scent, the room a few degrees cooler than the rest of the dorms. He could neither confirm nor disprove these muses, but the mere notion of their presence was enough for him; after all, recent events had seemed to dictate that reality was, at least to some degree, a matter of perspective. In a sense, Squall thought darkly, Jorge had been right. The line between dream and reality was almost too blurred to make out anymore. Who was to say that there was a difference, anyway? When it came down to it, wasn't the world as everyone perceived it, just that—a perception?

            As he knelt at the foot of the tiny bed in the center of the room, he wondered at how his perception of his own world was changing so drastically with every passing moment. 

_Simone… _His eyes narrowed a little, as if it would help him focus better on the little person covered by the comforter. _Never would have thought so, but I kind of like that name. _He rested one hand on the edge of the mattress as he stared dumbly at something that, to him, had never been more than a passing dream. He did not dare to move any closer than he'd already come. He could not place why, exactly, other than it felt right that he should keep this distance. From that distance, he could not see much, but what he could see made him feel stuck somewhere between quaking in his boots and laughing himself silly. The chaos of sensations roiled so thick inside him, they tangled with his ability to move, paralyzing him. So, he stared blankly, not knowing what to say nor having any ability to say it. What he was seeing was almost beyond his comprehension.

Sleeping silently in the small bed, the covers pulled up over her shoulders, was a little girl. Her short-ish hair was jet black and looked feather-soft. Each of the onyx tresses fell about her small ears in uneven folds, and Squall could not help thinking with a knowing smile the frustration she would have keeping her hair in order as she got older, if he was any indication. It was a trait she would probably curse him for. Her face was haunting; he could not see the color of her closed eyes, but still marveled at them, such perfect, smaller replicas of Rinoa's, vaguely slanted, but with his stark, sharp eyebrows. He was silently thankful that facial detail was apparently the _only _thing she had inherited from him. _I bet she gets one hell of a 'look' when she's mad._

He spent a small eternity kneeling where he was, hardly blinking, trying to describe to himself exactly what he was feeling. He could not stop staring. In his reverie, he forgot about the concept of dream and reality, dismissed the notion that _this _was nothing more than a figment of his imagination. For a time, all thoughts of returning to the life he knew were dashed from his conscience; not for anything would he wish this moment away.

I haven't seen a look like that on your face in a long time… 

Startled, Squall looked up over his shoulder. Rinoa stood silently behind him. He had not even noticed her. Relaxing again, he returned to staring at Simone, letting the mattress take more of his non-existent weight as he leaned into it. "I'm trying to understand," he whispered softly, half-afraid, half-hoping that Simone might hear him, "how it's possible, that I… She's…" Words failed him. Again he was frozen by the mess of questions in his heart.

Rinoa looked down on him from behind. A hint of a smile graced her lips. Gently, silently, she prompted him to finish. _What are you thinking?_

He did not answer for minutes, but Rinoa did not prod him any further. She stood behind him, waiting patiently for him to filter the proper response from his mind. Finally, Squall moved, a visible shudder. His arm reached out just a few inches toward the sleeping girl, not quite grasping for her, but longing to, if only he could. But she was living. Her heart was beating. His was cold. 

In a quiet voice so breathless it was difficult to distinguish the words, he answered. "…She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

His whisper drifted about the room for several long minutes; it seemed the longer the room remained silent, the louder the memory and the purer the truth of the words became. He was content to let it stay that way, having nothing more to say. In some obscure, convoluted way, everything he was feeling, or had felt all night was encompassed in that simple statement. Now, in the darkness of his daughter's bedroom, it was the only statement that had any meaning.

Over time, his eyes drifted, his mind wandered. The cool peace being in this room brought to him allowed him to think with some semblance of clarity. He began to turn over one question at a time, something that he had not been able to do since this insanity had begun. Still, all the answers he came up with fell into an area as grey as the mist outside. He wondered how he had come to be here, thought that there were many possible responses to that question. He was here because he walked here. He was in this position because of the way he had behaved in this reality. He was in this reality because he was in the cloud. He was in the cloud because Garden had flown into it. There were no clear-cut reasons as to why. One could think back and back, finding each and every little reason that had led up to him sitting here, a ghost in the room of his own child that he'd never had. There was not any one thing that he could pinpoint that would have definitively changed his fate. More and more, he was losing his hold on a good reason for him to want to change it in the first place. Heart-wrenching as this existence was, he was beginning to realize it was every bit as valid as the life he remembered before. Given the choice, would he go back? He wasn't sure. If it meant this reality would cease to exist, he might even answer, 'no.' Yet, he wondered if he could stand this existence—if it ended up to _not _be a dream—without going mad.

He blinked, his eyes refocusing on Simone. The next question in line was not for himself to answer. "Rinoa…"

_Yes? _Her tone in his mind was quick after a pause, as though she had not expected him to speak.

Squall glanced over his shoulder at her. "Is she a…" Not sure how to pose his question without sounding judgmental, he let the words hang, trusting Rinoa would be intuitive enough to fill in the blank.

_A sorceress?_

Squall did not answer, just looked away, setting his gaze on Simone again, as though laying sight on his future, feeling so privileged to be allowed the honor of seeing it with his own eyes.

He heard Rinoa sigh behind him. _We can't know unless and until she shows signs that she is… _So this, too, was a question weighing on her heart. 

_I hope she isn't…_ Squall knew better than any man the consequences of having sorceress abilities. Rinoa—at least the Rinoa he remembered—had suffered both the persecution and great responsibilities that came with possession of Hyne's power. There was no telling if _this _Rinoa had the same monopoly over the sorceress magic, and he did not feel particularly compelled to ask. Whether or not Edea or Adel had relinquished their share to her or not was irrelevant as far as he was concerned. The simple ability to receive sorceress powers was dangerous enough in his opinion. If Simone had inherited it—small chance though it was—she was in danger. For Ultimecia, still at large, a child sorceress would be easy to take over and manipulate. And the perfect hostage to use against the only person on the planet who had the power to oppose her. 

Squall's grim thoughts were interrupted when Simone stirred in her sleep. He stayed absolutely still and watched as she rolled from her side onto her back, her head turning in the direction of the window, though she did not open her eyes. Then she was still again. Squall tilted his head a little in gentle curiosity. "I wonder what she's dreaming about." _She tosses just like I do…_

Apparently having no answer to give him, Rinoa walked silently to the side of the little bed and sat on her knees, a smile that nearly mirrored Squall's expression of wonder fading in and out of existence on her face as she watched her child sleep.

Some buried part of Squall's memories surfaced as he watched Rinoa painstakingly rearrange the comforter about Simone's shoulders. He remembered Ellone sitting by his bed the same way, pulling the covers over him and whispering reassurances that his nightmares would leave him if he simply refused to believe in them. _'They like it when you're afraid of them,' _she'd often told him in the darkest overcast nights of their stormy seaside home. _'If you're not afraid, they'll go away.'_

He'd once thought _this _was a nightmare, that maybe if he just denied it power over him, it would end and he'd be free of it. Guiltily, he was glad he hadn't been able to.

The corner of his lips twitching another smile, he whispered a little tune, to himself, to Simone. "If a song were the wind, I would fly through the night to you…" He knew logically that she could not hear him, at the same time remembering more of Ellone's wisdom. _'Talk to her…your words may not reach her…but your heart will.' _

Rinoa eyed him, her brow shooting up in surprise. _Are you _singing_? _Her thoughts blurted in a mixture of shock and amusement.

Squall shook his head slowly. "Just a song Ellone used to sing to me when I was scared…"

A lullaby? 

He smirked. "I guess so. Not one of those stupid ones about babies falling out of trees or anything." He watched Rinoa smile at him, found himself smiling back. It was nice to share a smile again.

How does it go again? 

Silent for a time, Squall tried to recall the entire song, but could only manage to conjure the first stanza. Some part of him found the whole idea of himself singing anything amusing; normally he would not have been caught dead singing a lullaby, or anything else for that matter. On that note, considering his circumstances, he had no compunctions. He kept his voice low, not quite sure he could hit all the notes right, but not particularly caring whether he did or not. 

_If a song were the wind, _

_I would fly through the night to you_

_Like the light of the stars_

Or the voice of a dream come true… 

He shook his head slowly. "Can't remember the rest…Ellone would sing it to me to get me to sleep again after I…had a bad dream." The cruel irony of the fact passed between them in the form of a mutual smirk.

Shaking her head in mild amusement, Rinoa's gaze rested again on Simone. _You wanted to name her Ellone, but I didn't want to name her after a dead person._

"Ellone is dead?" Squall's tone was almost casual. If he hadn't already been subjected to so many shocks, this grim revelation might have jarred him. But he was slowly letting go of the inclination to assume that _anything _was the same in this reality as in the one he remembered. 

Rinoa's stare fell nervously to the abstract patterns of the comforter. _A lot of people died in Ultimecia's first wave…no one was ready for it…_

Sensing she did not want to talk any further on the subject, Squall went on to his next question. "…So, why Simone? It kind of rhymes with Ellone."

She brightened immediately. Smiling and making a show of looking embarrassed. _You promise you won't laugh?_

He waved one hand dismissively. "I promise."

_…I named her after my dog, Simon._

"Your dog? What happened to Angelo?"

_Oh… _Sighing, her brief moment of lightheartedness broken, she stared at the blackened window. _…I guess you don't remember. He died in Timber, not long after I first met you…fell onto the train tracks...you felt so bad about it, you got Simon for me._

Squall frowned. Angelo wasn't the kind of foolish dog to blunder into the path of an oncoming train. He got the impression that wasn't all there was to the story, but thought better of pressing for details. Smiling again, just slightly, he nodded in understanding, adding,  "I think Simone's a perfect name."

His reassurance brought a little light back into Rinoa's heart; she nodded back appreciatively, inexplicably happy that he approved. She watched him for a while as his eyes grew distant. Oddly curious, she could not help prodding him. _…What is it?_

He responded at first by looking away from her, out into the smoky black beyond the window. "Sometimes…" He trailed off, rethought his words, then tried again. "In a way, I wish I didn't remember what I remember. I wish…I knew the life you do, right now. Then I wouldn't feel bad that I'd wanted it any other way..."

Rinoa looked suddenly pained, and Squall was about to ask her what he'd said to hurt her when she spoke aloud, deadening anything he had been about to articulate. "I'm not sure if this is the existence you'd want."

He closed his mouth, deciding not to talk, and just watched her, letting his silence indicate he was waiting for her to explain.

"Squall," she said the name as if  calling upon a god, "it's been a long time. I haven't seen this kind of _life _in you since…the day before you died." She shivered, looking like she had been about to say more, but had stopped herself.

Squall began to feel something in the bottom of his heart, a tension that was not his own. He resisted the urge to get up and move closer to Rinoa, forced himself to settle with staring at her longingly. Quietly, he hazarded what he already knew was a sensitive question with a raw answer. "What happened to me?" He could feel she wanted to explain it all to him, but was being held back by her unwillingness to recollect the memory and the lingering doubt that her knight hadn't finally lost his mind completely.

She did not need much prompting, but her answer came in a broken voice and a collection of equally fractured sentences. "…It's…not your fault. You just weren't…no one could have survived what she did to you. No one knows, how strong, how _strong_ you were. Squall, no one knows…you _fought _Ultimecia to get back to me. You were able to resist her power long enough to find me…and ask me to take you."

He stiffened, his eyes widening. If he was understanding correctly, Ultimecia had tormented him until he'd come to Rinoa begging for release in the only way he could have gotten it. He did not like the sheer selfishness on his part the scenario implicated. "I asked you…to save myself?" He shook his head incredulously. _What kind of idiot…_

Seeing his dismay, Rinoa leaned forward, toward him, holding up her hand and attempting to wave away his fears. "No, no," she whispered urgently, gently. "…Not to save yourself…to save _me._" Seeing him relax a little, she let her hand down into her lap."It wasn't like that. She had you for days. She tortured you to get you to give into her. You couldn't resist her forever, not alone…and you knew that if she took you, I would be helpless. You found a way to call to me and show me where you were. When I got to you…" She closed her eyes, shaking.

"It's all right," Squall murmured. "You don't have to describe it to me…I can imagine." How often in the world he knew had he held Rinoa in the darkness of his room, for this very reason, the horror of Ultimecia's cruelty plaguing both their minds, even though she had been defeated? The nightmare had continued to hold them both in its ruthless grip in the aftermath, and they had been mutual supports against the weight, keeping each other standing when the memories came haunting. They had helped each other move on with their lives. Here, Ultimecia's threat was still real, and neither Squall nor Rinoa had been able to give each other any kind of physical comfort. Neither, it seemed, had _he _chosen to offer any other kind of support. How he wished he could touch her now.

Rinoa stammered on, either oblivious to his thoughts or choosing to ignore them. "To keep her from using you, you told…told me that, if, if I wanted to, I could take you as my knight. So I did…Ultimecia kept holding onto you, even after that, and she lost some control over time compression. We found a way back to our time, and dragged her with us. Without the Junction Machine Ellone, she became trapped here. Since then, she's been searching for a way to recreate time compression. Her anger made her destroy almost everything. Half the people in the world were wiped out…so much death…"

"And I died, but you survived. What about the others? Zell, Irvine, Quistis…?"

Rinoa shook her head. "Who are they?"

A tiny moan of protest interrupted the solemn conversation. Both Squall and Rinoa instantly forgot their respective questions and stared at Simone, who, rubbing her eyes with the awkward coordination of a toddler, turned on her side to face Rinoa. The small, airy voice that broke the silence came near to breaking Squall's heart, as well. 

"Mo-mmy?"

Rinoa leaned near her daughter, smoothing out the groggy child's mussed hair and whispering to her as Squall looked on in dumbfounded wonder. "It's me…I'm sorry, did I wake you up, sweetie?"

Simone blinked her dark, perfect eyes. "Wake-me-up," she affirmed, sitting up clumsily and looking around the room. "Who you tokkin' to?"

Squall continued to stare in fascination, wondering at Simone's every move, watching her every breath and feeling a bizarre, growing sense of utter joy as he realized, over and over, that this living, breathing, beautiful person before him was of his and Rinoa's creation, part of him, part of her, and yet completely unique and impossible to duplicate. She was a gift that only he and Rinoa had been capable of bestowing upon the world, with her own mind and her own heart, made from Rinoa, and from him, but belonging only to herself. 

In answer to Simone's question, Rinoa smiled, rearranging the covers around her daughter so she wouldn't get cold. "I'm talking to your daddy."

All at once, the simple truth finally hit Squall, crashing down on him like a tidal wave. _I'm her father…_

Simone seemed to wake up a little more at Rinoa's words. "Oh. Hi, daddy!" She waved blindly at thin air, so happening to be facing Squall's exact direction. For an impossible moment, it seemed Simone might be able to see him. Then she turned and waved around at the rest of the room, just in case she'd guessed wrong the first time.

Squall's eyes narrowed in a tight mixture of surprise, elation, and agony. _She really believes I'm here…_ Unable to calm the trembling in his voice, he whispered back to his daughter's deaf ears. "Hello, S-simone…" Meekly, he held up his hand in a weak, brokenhearted wave back.

Rinoa was barely able to stand the scene, briefly biting her lip to keep herself from choking. Stoking Simone's soft hair and trying not to let any tears escape her eyes, she eased the little girl back down. "He says hello…go back to sleep, now. Tomorrow is a big day."

Oblivious to the ghost at the foot of her bed, Simone reluctantly obeyed her mother, snuggling into the pillow and letting Rinoa's gentle hands caress her hair and pull the covers back over her shoulders. "Mommy, you gunna stay eer?" she asked in an inordinately loud tone.

Rinoa put her finger to her lips. "Yes, Simone…I'll stay right here. Quiet now, other people are sleeping."

Simone dramatically lowered her voice to a conspiratory whisper. "Daddy, too?"

"Yes, Daddy, too." Rinoa cast a gentle smile in Squall's direction.

"O-kay. You stay eer. Gu'niiight…"

What followed was one of the longest comfortable silences Squall and Rinoa had ever shared. Rinoa remained by Simone's side, watching until the girl's eyes drifted closed and then watching her some more, Squall doing the same from his vantage. Squall felt half certain that, were he not already dead, his heart would have stopped the moment Simone's eyes had fixed on him, looking _at _him, not through him as he would have expected. It was an incredible feeling. As much as it hurt, he wanted to keep feeling it.

He stood slowly, moving over to where Rinoa sat, and knelt again, beside her. As always, he did not touch her, and he did not come anywhere close to touching Simone, but he regarded them both with a gentle expression for a few more minutes before daring to speak. "…Do you always talk to her like that?"

Rinoa did not take her eyes off her daughter to answer him. _Yes…_

Since he could not acquire Rinoa's gaze, he followed her example and rested his eyes on Simone, taking in every detail of her face, feeling breathless with awe even as he spoke. "She can talk…pretty well, for a two-year old."

Making a visible show of not laughing that Squall did not notice, his sorceress smiled wryly at him, finally looking at him. _At this rate, by the time she's five she'll have a bigger vocabulary than I will. _ 

"She…she knows who I am?"

_…She knows she has a daddy, and that he's always here. Even…when he isn't._

Squall frowned. "What does that mean?"

_You don't really come to see her much, anymore… _She fidgeted uncomfortably, rearranging her legs beneath her so she was not putting all her weight on her knees. _Come to think of it, you don't do much of anything, anymore. You just haven't been here, period._

Sighing, checking his growing rage at the Squall-who-wasn't, he turned to gaze calmly at her. "…I'm here, now."

Rinoa looked sharply at him, seeming angry at first, but her fury faded quickly in light of earnest conviction shed by his unwavering gaze. Suddenly ashamed, she hunched her shoulders a little, seeming to cower from him. _…I know you are. _"I'm going to bed," she announced quietly. She stood up and turned toward the door. 

Squall watched her, wondering at the pain that must have been arching through her soul, wishing he could do something to stop it, but knowing that unless she was willing to share it with him, there was nothing he could do to help her. "Is it all right with you if I stay here?" he asked instead.

One last glance at him over her shoulder, Rinoa nodded wordlessly and left. 

Squall looked on after her until the doors shut behind her. Then he went back to memorizing every detail he could about the sleeping child before him. "I'll stay here…" Sighing, he leaned against the bed, resting his head near Simone's ear, on the vaguest chance that his voice might somehow make it into her dreams.

"I'll stay right here…just like you said."


	4. All Fall Down

IV

All Fall Down

--

_"See yourself in shadow, love __  
With the darkness in your eyes   
Promises can lose their worth   
But The Promise never dies…"_

--

For the next few days, it was Squall who felt like the child, taking in his surroundings, trying to acclimatize himself to his new life.

All things considered, the Garden looked fairly normal. Aside from a few alternative paint jobs and some hastily-caulked minor structural damage (sustained, Rinoa had explained, in a recent siege by Ultimecia's forces), there was very little to differentiate between this Garden and the one Squall knew. The daytime hallways were as busy as ever, although the overall noise level was lower than he remembered, and there was an underlying uneasiness hanging in the air that was difficult to ignore. It may have been a commonplace aura, Squall thought, which wouldn't be surprising considering this Garden had existed the past two years in a world still held in thrall by Ultimecia's ruthless presence. 

But I don't think so… 

Squall leaned idly against the railing of the main dome's outer ring, silently observing SeeDs, students, and instructors that passed on whatever duties commanded their schedules. It was strange, not knowing the purpose and calendar of each and every SeeD that walked by; that curious feeling was soured by the fact Squall had no means of finding out. So used to being kept up-to-date on Balamb Garden's every breath and heartbeat, the former commander was now helpless and inept, a ghost wandering the halls of a shadow he once called home, every second spent trying desperately to understand what it was that had brought him here, and, even more desperately, what he was going to do now that he was here. Each and every Garden denizen passed him without blinking, completely unaware they were being watched. Squall was at once thankful he could observe his surroundings uninterrupted and frustrated he could not interact with them. 

The night had ended sooner than he had expected, and much sooner than he had hoped for. He had kept Rinoa up for the better part of the early morning, leaving precious few hours for him to spend watching over Simone. He seemed to recall drifting off into a sort of trance during that time—he'd be hard-pressed to call it "sleep"—though it may have been his thoughts had simply run away with him and he'd lost track of the time. Rinoa had freed him from his reverie when she'd come to take Simone to breakfast. Startled into awareness, Squall had felt fuzzy-minded and groggy, as if he'd been jostled awake from a deep slumber.

His face twitched the beginnings of a wry smirk, but he stifled the inclination, finding nothing amusing about the onslaught of memories and observations. As a child, he'd once wondered if ghosts could sleep (that is, back when he was young and naïve enough to believe in ghosts and other such ridiculous superstitions). He supposed now, he had an answer. Perhaps there was some truth to the saying, "ignorance is bliss."

_Maybe I can sleep…but how can I ever rest…? _He shook his head and straightened, restless and bored of people-watching. Stepping out into the flow of foot traffic, he picked a random person to tail, settling for a young male student with a head of curly blonde hair that stood out clearly enough for Squall could easily keep track of it with his peripheral vision. Thus, he could spend his mental energy on staring off at nothing in particular and not lose his lead.

His thoughts turned back to Rinoa and Simone. After a dose of sleep, Rinoa had been more approachable, and made no objection when Squall followed them to the cafeteria. They had exchanged few thoughts, Rinoa explaining briefly her schedule for the day—such as it was. From what Squall had caught, her agenda consisted mainly of trying to deal with the cloud, debating a course of action with the ranking SeeD and the headmaster, two strangers to Squall whose names escaped him at the moment; Rinoa had stopped talking to him when it became clear he was not listening. He had been too preoccupied with watching Simone struggle to eat her waffles without dribbling syrup down the front of her shirt (apparently her surprising grace with words did not translate into similar grace at the table). 

Everything the little girl did was magic. Always, she seemed to be trying to figure out the world and people around her. She asked questions of her mother constantly, but she was different from other children her age in that she did not scream or squeal for the sheer joy of it. Rather, she observed the world around her with a piercing, calculating gaze and spoke only when she had a question or an opinion to voice (which was quite often). She seemed to manipulate and analyze every new sight with her stare. Her eyes, black and deep as her mother's, had looked in Squall's direction several times, but never lingered. At first, he had been disappointed, but then had become thankful that Simone could not see him. What if her mental image of him was different from reality? He could not bear the thought that she might see him and not recognize him. Better, he decided, for her to see him however she wished, and he remain invisible to all but her mind's eye. That way, there would be no disillusions. He could watch her, she would believe in him, and both would be content with their mutual understanding of each other.

He had decided not to accompany them to the preschool area where Simone was to be dropped off, lest he spend all day enraptured by the child. Even that brief goodbye had been heart-wrenching. When Squall had first heard of Simone's existence, he had not wanted to believe it. Now he did not want to leave her side. He reconsidered his initial fear at the notion of being a father. At the time, he had believed he was afraid because he did not know how to be a father—and that was true, at least in part—but in hindsight, he realized what he had feared the most was not inability, but in_evit_ability. 

What he had feared is exactly what had happened the moment he'd laid eyes on Simone. For the second time in his life, he'd fallen in love. Simone's entrance into this "dream" had changed everything. He no more wanted to leave her behind than he did to abandon his memories.

But, he thought with a wince as he followed the student onto the central elevator, _what about Rinoa? _What about the life they'd had together? What about his friends, which had gone conveniently missing in this reality? What about SeeD? What about the world? He could not ignore the complete and utter _wrong-ness _of this version of history. He could not ignore the fact his memories were completely different from everything he understood about this place. His separation from Rinoa was as out of place as the all-encompassing cloud. 

There was another oddity, as well, one Squall planned on asking Rinoa about the next time he saw her. He'd noticed it only an hour ago, after he'd taken a short wander into the training area to appraise any changes that might have been made there. It had always been a matter of habit to keep mental tabs on all of his Guardian Forces when he entered a potentially dangerous environment. Dead though he was, the reflex still held true. But when he'd sent out his mental "Marco," this time, he'd failed to receive his Guardians' customary "Polo."  The simple _absence _of his Guardians' presence had unnerved him. He'd arrived at the conclusion that there were three possible explanations for the lack of response: that Guardian Forces' junctions did not extend beyond the death of their charges; that the Guardian Forces could not answer because of something the cloud was doing; or that the Guardians _would _not answer for some other reason.

Squall was still lost in his musings when the boy he was following exited the elevator. Too late, he moved to follow, only to have the door slap shut in his face. Unwilling to test whether he could pass through the doors (and not wanting to know what a fall from a rising elevator would be like, dead or otherwise), he swore under his breath, as if anyone with him in the narrow room could hear to be offended. He folded his arms in silent resignation as the lift shot skyward. Out of spite, he mockingly stepped out of the way once the doors opened at the top floor. 

His eyes widened as the last of two occupants exited and a single new passenger boarded the elevator. The face was the first Squall recognized since he'd found himself in this alien Garden. It was Nida.

A momentary hope that, being one of the few consistencies between the two worlds, the Garden's navigator might be able to see him, died instantly as Nida stepped onto the lift and, not giving Squall a glance, turned to choose his floor. Squall noted with curiosity that they were headed to the basement level. Strange, considering Nida was the Garden's full-time navigator and rarely had any reason to have business in the administrative floor of the campus. That was of course assuming Nida had the same duty as chief helmsman in this reality. But Squall saw no reason to believe otherwise. His interest piqued, he decided to follow. Not that he had much choice in the matter, anyhow. 

They stepped out of the elevator, and into the midst of an escalating argument. 

Nida stood at the top of the stairway leading down, a stop so abrupt that Squall almost walked through him. The helmsman stood characteristically rigid, but with a cold silence that Squall found unusual. He frowned. Why was everyone he recognized in this reality acting so differently? History seemed to indicate he had been a very different person from who he was now. Even Rinoa acted strange…

It was Rinoa who was currently chewing out a SeeD who must have been twice her size and weight, and perhaps five or more years her senior. Seemingly oblivious of these facts, she scolded him as though he were nothing more than an insubordinate toddler. 

"How many times do I have to say this?! Everyone in the Garden is frightened, and it's beginning to show. Have you taken a walk lately? The tension is _breathable, _all over the place. You can't keep pushing everyone like this. It's driving them all into hysterics!" 

_Including you. _Squall stood silently on the top stair as he watched and listened. This was sounding very much like a dozen such lectures of the type he had received routinely from Rinoa in the past. The expression on the berated SeeD's face was beginning to resemble that of a smashed Jack-O-lantern. 

Amused, Squall leaned his weight onto one foot and stood slightly crooked, settled to observe.

"Sorceress," returned the embattled SeeD in a tone so laced with condescension, Squall germinated an instant dislike for him, "these people are SeeDs. They may seem like everyday people to you, but they are also soldiers. I assure you, you underestimate their capacity for excellence under adversity." 

Hands on her hips, elbows akimbo, Rinoa leaned forward a little, her face screwed up in a disdainful sneer. She cut off the ranking SeeD's next words with a few of her own. "Don't give me that crap. They may seem like everyday soldiers to you," she snapped, imitating the commander's surly tone, "but they're also people."

"Be that as it may, it is not _your _job to dictate to me how to run this Garden."

"I've lived here longer than you have, and I _know _most of these people better than you ever will. If you'd at least _listen—"_

"Um, excuse me."

Both paused their mini-war to turn twin scowls at he who had so dared to interrupt their verbal bloodbath. Nida now stood in the line of fire, and held up his hands in subordinate entreaty before anyone could accuse him of butting in. "I was told there was a conference down here I was supposed to attend, in—" He checked his watch. "Four minutes. Do I need to be somewhere else, or is this the pre-show entertainment?" Throughout, Nida somehow kept his polite undertone, and it may have been this fact alone that prevented him from suffering the retribution of either his superior officer or Rinoa.

Smiling in false humor, the ranking SeeD bowed and indicated the path to the headmaster's office with a flourish of his hand. "This is the place." Straightening his stance and smoothing his neat black hair, he cast a sideways leer at Rinoa, intoned in a voice laden with sarcasm, "After you, Peacekeeper."

Fuming, Rinoa stuck her tongue out and refused to move. "Be my guest."

The tall SeeD shrugged and went on his way, stepping nonchalantly as though on an afternoon stroll.

Squall felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. He _definitely _didn't like this man.

Silently, he stole after the trio as they made their way into the massive room Garden Master NORG had once called home.

With any luck, the huge Shumi loan shark was just as nonexistent in this reality as everyone else he used to know.

  
* 

As it turned out, luck was on his side, at least in the matter of NORG. There was no sign of the Shumi or his enclosure. This was minor consolation, and Squall hardly thought about it; he was more concerned with the SeeD Rinoa had called Commander. The was something about the man that made Squall feel like squirming in place. It wasn't anger that he felt, exactly, despite the Commander's arrogant, almost chauvinistic attitude. The closest word Squall could think of to describe the emotion was _disapproval. _He now watched the commander from the massive doorway, his eyes narrowed and suspicious. 

The "headmaster's" chamber was as vast as Cid's, although Squall's memory had failed him in identifying it as the headmaster's room. In this world, the headmaster was no longer a high office in Garden—a fact Rinoa must have explained at some point, but Squall couldn't remember her speaking of it. Instead, the title of Garden Master had been reinstated, and someone else appointed to the task of orchestrating the Garden's greater functions. Squall wondered if Cid was still alive here, indeed, if the portly man had even existed. But Garden had been Cid Kramer's brainchild. If not his in this reality, then whose?

Rinoa, the commander, and Nida stood before a huge desk, behind which stood a well-built woman who was probably nearing thirty. At first glance, Squall thought she resembled Edea, but after staring at her for a few minutes he realized the similarities were superficial. Her sleek, ebony hair was long, but not incredibly so, and her frame was not nearly so slender as Squall's Matron. Where Edea was slim and graceful, this woman—presumably the Garden Master—was lithe and powerful. Squall had no doubt she had been a SeeD, or at least a soldier of some variety, in the past. Her eyes were an intense hazel, almost amber. Clad in an official-looking uniform graced with Garden's emblem, she towered above Rinoa, looked Nida straight in the eyes, and was topped only by the commander's impressive height.

"Thank you for coming on such short notice," she said in a strong alto as commanding as her gaze. "I know you all have things to do, but I need your input. The reports of strange dreams have tripled today, and only so far. The incidents are no longer a matter of a scattered few. At this time, I'm also considering that the dreams may be a threat to the Garden, or more specifically, the sanity of its inhabitants. The students and SeeDs that have come to me describe not so much dreams as visions, experiences that seem so real it is difficult to call them simple figments of the imagination. Some people have even told me they question the legitimacy of the living world that we now stand in…those few I have had relieved of duty as a safety precaution." She said the last as if it were a mere afterthought. "What I need to know is what you three feel might be the fastest means of escaping this mist. To determine that, I will ask each of you a some questions and you must answer them completely. Is that understood?"

The three nodded readily. Squall folded his arms. Apparently the Garden Master's approach to decision-making was well-established. Different from Cid's strictly democratic methodology, he noted, but still effective.

The Garden Master proceeded with her questions without hesitation. "Nida. Has there been any progress in determining what is causing the Garden's navigational systems to malfunction?"

Nida shook his head. "No, sir. As far as we can tell, the Garden isn't moving because there isn't anything for it to move _in. _The propulsion ring needs a solid or liquid surface area to push or pull along. If we're to believe the readouts, there just isn't any. We're sitting on top of a bubble of thin air. It doesn't make any sense, but we can't come up with anything better. Wherever we are, it's not on land or sea."

The Garden Master nodded. "Have you seen any openings in the cloud? Any at all, no matter how small."

Again, Nida shook his head no.

The woman turned to the next person. "Rinoa. Have you been able to determine if the cloud is magical or created through some other sorcery?" 

Rinoa folded her hands behind her back thoughtfully. "No…I can't tell you what it is, but I can tell you what it _isn't._"

The Garden Master nodded for her to continue.

"It _isn't _magical…and it _isn't _something Ultimecia created, unless she used a machine to do it for her. In fact, it doesn't feel like anything man-made to me…it's too chaotic for that. As far as I can tell, the cloud is completely natural. No one made it. It just formed somehow."

"Any other insights as to its nature?"

"No…" Looking increasingly uncomfortable, Rinoa bowed her head and stared at the floor. "Not unless you call seeing ghosts an insight."

Squall tensed.

"Ghosts?" The Garden Master frowned, a suspicious glint in her eyes. "Explain."

Shuffling her feet, Rinoa glanced behind her at the wall, as though seeking an escape route. But it was too late for her to hold back now. "Last night…I had a conversation with…someone…in my room." She closed her eyes, blushing faintly.

The Garden Master's eyes narrowed. "Squall?"

Rinoa nodded, slowly.

The Garden Master sighed and sat down in her chair. Leaning back, she regarded Rinoa with an air of frustrated sympathy. "Is this the first you've heard of him recently, Rinoa?" Again, Rinoa nodded. The tall woman's eyes wandered to the side for a moment, and she sat silently, pondering. The chamber was deathly quiet. No one seemed willing to dare infringe on the Garden Master's musings. Finally the woman spoke again, but her voice was carefully tempered, apparently aware she was treading on a very sensitive issue. "Is he here with you now, Rinoa?"

Nida stepped forward suddenly. "Sorceress Rinoa, you were talking about how stressed out everyone is. If there's anyone who's overextended here, it's you. You said yourself you haven't slept well…"

            The Garden Master made a slicing motion with her hand, and Nida fell silent. To Rinoa, she repeated, "Rinoa, do you see Squall in the room?"

            Very slowly, as if afraid of what she might find, Rinoa looked up and searched the room. Inevitably, her eyes fixed on Squall's position in the doorway, and for a moment they locked gazes. Squall stared back impassively. He already knew what Rinoa was going to say. He could read it in her expression, the apology in her eyes. He nodded ever so slightly, not exactly giving permission, but simply acknowledging he understood what she intended. The next instant, Rinoa looked elsewhere, pretending to scour the rest of the chamber, and finally looked back at the Garden Master. Careful to meet the woman eye-to-eye, she answered, "No."

            Without further discussion on the subject, the Garden Master turned her attention to the tall SeeD. "Commander Dane. What is your assessment of the situation?"

            Commander Dane, who had not batted an eye throughout the entire spectacle, now blinked calmly and answered readily, as if he'd rehearsed his dialogue beforehand. "Garden Master, my soldiers are at their wits' end." This earned him an incredulous gaze from Rinoa. Dane ignored her stare. "They are not used to working so hard with so few results. The mist is unnerving us all, and this continued idleness is getting us nowhere. I suggest action, sir, soon. Scientific study is all fine, but there comes a time when brute force may be the most effective method by which to solve a problem."

            The Garden Master, having listened intently, took a moment to digest his opinion, then prompted. "Do you have anything specific in mind?"

            Commander Dane smiled. "Frankly, I think this cloud is in our way, Garden Master. I suggest—specifically—that we pulverize the bloody thing."

            Despite the tension, Squall almost laughed. Would that it were so simple, he would have given the same suggestion to Cid days ago! But unless this Garden had some form of weapon capable of burning away a cloud this size at its disposal, he didn't see how that course of action was possible. 

            Then again, this Balamb Garden was one from a world at war with Ultimecia.

            The Garden Master sat up suddenly. "Agreed. Prepare the burn cannons. But…I don't want to instill false hope in the officers. Do not call battle stations. Don't call attention to what we're about to do. I know it is a bit unorthodox, but I think it best."

            Commander Dane nodded his acknowledgment. "Sir." He cast a sideways glance at Rinoa. "What about you?" he asked suddenly, in stark contrast with his usual formality. "Will you help?"

            All eyes turned on The Sorceress.

            Rinoa glanced at each pair of eyes, and for the first time since his conversation with her last night, Squall saw her shiver a little. "A-all right," she answered finally, then stilled her shaking and stood straighter, nodding resolutely. "I'll help out."

            The Garden Master appeared pleased. "Good. You are dismissed. Get to it."

            As the three turned and moved back toward the doorway, Squall stood to the side and waited for Rinoa, trailing behind the other two, to reach him. When she did, he fell in step with her, walked beside her silently, concerned. He had many questions, but decided they could wait until later. 

            She glanced at him surreptitiously as they filed into the elevator. The distress in her eyes was clear enough; Squall's frown deepened when he felt a trickle of intense sadness leak from behind the emotional wall she had erected between them last night. Finally unable to stand the tension any longer, he prompted her, not unkindly, "Are you gonna tell me what that was about?" He didn't bother thinking the words to her; not as if anyone could hear him, anyhow.

            Rinoa shot him a brief, accusing glare. _Why did you follow me? _

            "I didn't. I followed Nida."

            Her excuse for changing the subject foiled, Rinoa looked away and stared at the wall of the elevator. _Please…don't make me explain it…I'm sorry, Squall. I couldn't tell her you were there. She'd confine me to my room if I told her that. She thinks you're a hallucination…most people do._

            Taking this in, Squall studied the back of Rinoa's head. He couldn't help noticing her hair was a little disheveled, as if she'd rushed brushing it that morning. The caramel stripes along the sides of her head seemed duller than usual, and the ebony strands, normally sleek and smooth-looking, were lackluster and missing their usual shine. Squall resisted the impulse to reach out and stroke the black tresses. He worried for Rinoa's health. But he refrained from questioning her further and answered gently. "What do you believe?"

            _What? _This got her to look at him again. 

            "Do you think I'm a hallucination?" 

            Rinoa seemed shocked by the question. Her eyes darted around the elevator, making sure no one was watching her. _Of course I don't, _she answered finally, firmly. _But it's hard…when no one believes me._

            Closing his eyes, Squall willed himself not to be angry with everyone who had ever questioned his existence to Rinoa. He knew they had no proof other than her word, and it was human nature to question the existence of things they could not see. Had he been on the other side of the argument, he probably would have been just as skeptical. After all, he didn't believe in ghosts, either. _But this is different…_

            In that respect, he realized that his dogged disbelief in disembodied spirits conflicted with one of his other beliefs: that there were exceptions to every generalization.

            Not to mention it was difficult not to feel a bit of resentment at having his opinions and very existence conveniently denied simply because he was dead. He made a mental note never to do the same to anyone he knew. _Even if they think you're seeing things, so what? It's your mind. You can believe what you want to._

            Though he hadn't directed the thoughts specifically at Rinoa, she picked up on them and replied tartly, _Ultimecia hallucinates, too._

            Squall had nothing to say to that.

            The Elevator reached the top floor in the span of a few seconds, the same as the length of Squall and Rinoa's conversation. Rinoa, having been the last person in, was the first out, and led the three-man (and one ghost) procession to the lift that would carry them up one more level to the bridge. 

            "What are burn cannons?" Squall asked suddenly.

            _An energy weapon. _Rinoa didn't look at him as she stepped onto the lift and waited for the others. _There are four of them. They're very powerful…they can blast the tops off mountains. I don't know how they work._

            "Sounds impressive." He saw Commander Dane give Rinoa what could only be called a worried look as he and Nida boarded the lift, and this distracted him from posing any further questions. He spent the entire lift ride glaring at Dane, who continued to steal brief glances at the sorceress…

            _…My _sorceress, Squall caught himself thinking, and he wasn't ashamed of the sudden possessiveness that suddenly overcame him. That's what it was, he realized suddenly. This Commander Dane held more in his eyes than professional respect for Rinoa. Squall sensed the man's interest_. _Gritting his teeth to suppress the growl rising in his throat, Squall barely checked himself. His invisible eyes burned murderously. He kept his next thought carefully muted so Rinoa wouldn't hear. _Keep your hands off her, asshole. _His fists balled tightly at his sides, hatred for the man swelling in his gut. Much as he was inclined to simply push the arrogant son of a bitch off the edge of the rising platform, Squall knew he had not the ability. _If that moron touches her, though…he'll regret it, _he vowed, not knowing or caring how he could back up his threat. _He'll see how imaginary I am._

            Unable to fight back a quiet snarl, Squall folded his arms and continued to scowl until the lift reached the bridge.

            Nida seemed anxious to get back to his post. He quickly relieved his stand-in and took up a position of readiness, waiting for his commander's orders.

            Squall stood moodily off to the side, skulking, ignoring Rinoa's concerned looks. He stared daggers at Commander Dane as the ranking SeeD began to spout orders.

            "Tactical, bring the burn cannons online. But no one announce this on the intercom…we've orders to keep this quiet in case it doesn't work." The small bridge crew saluted their acknowledgment and hurried to carry out his mandate.

            Squall was unaware of the SeeDs scrambling about the bridge, did not even flinch when one passed through him to get to a control panel. They were of no consequence to him. He paid no attention even to Rinoa, who was now watching him anxiously as Dane went about directing his officers. It was Dane who drew the ghost's attention, and Squall's mental efforts to muffle his hatred were made irrelevant by the look in his eyes. Only when he finally noticed Rinoa staring worriedly at him did he force himself to look away and pretend nothing was bothering him. He turned his eyes on Nida. Strangely, Rinoa made no attempt to question him, verbally or otherwise, about his foul mood. 

Just as well, he decided. If Rinoa was unaware of Dane's wandering eyes, that suited Squall just fine. 

  
* 

            Balamb Garden turned slowly in the grey void, gradually pivoting to port. It turned until it faced the lightest side of the mist, engines humming steadily as it worked to maneuver in a world without substance. It came to rest with its nose facing the pale aura of the sun, its silvery, battle-scarred hull reflecting a weak azure glow in the sickly light. Then the engines quieted. Every light in the steel citadel dimmed or died completely. For a moment, all in the cloud was complete silence, save for the soft, siren-esque song of the Garden's propulsion halo.

            Almost as silently, large bay doors opened on the extreme port and starboard wings. One similar bay opened on the forward ventral area, and still another sprouted atop the sloping prow. From a distance, it would have appeared rather as though the Garden was about to deploy troops or smaller vehicles. Any questions a spectator might have had about the purpose of the doors, however, was answered when the occupants of the bays finally showed their faces.

            Branched, triple-pronged extensions resembling nothing so much as giant microwave antennae sprouted like deadly lilies from the bays. Translucent, they appeared almost crystalline, an impression that was augmented as they powered on, humming and resonating, striking a minor chord that rose in haunting, disharmonious accompaniment with the Garden's ever-turning propulsion ring. 

            The rest of the Garden darkened and the crystal chorus raised every voice, a keening crescendo, as all available power was poured into the huge mechanisms. The air crackled and the Garden appeared to shimmer as the building charge reached a climatic peak. With a final growl of execution, the weapons fired simultaneously.

            Parallel streams of pulsing, intensely blue energy ripped through the mist. They arrowed across the colorless expanse, blindingly brilliant in contrast. The chorus rose to a howling, undulating shriek, as the lament of millions of disembodied spirits—every voice in heaven or every scream in hell. 

            As though in defiance of the light, the clouds grew darker. All around the Garden, which now gleamed impossibly as if bathed in holy light, the mist began to coil and boil. A deep sound, like that of an approaching storm, began to rise, poisoning the Garden's resonant litany. The growl strengthened to a roar, one that competed with the crystalline song for supremacy. The world grew blacker and blacker, denying the touch of the sun, until Balamb Garden was the sole beacon of light and hope within the thundering darkness.

  
* 

            Everyone on the bridge—likely everyone in Garden—watched in awe as the grey void twisted and writhed in apparent agony. Then the sky went black and it seemed that a starless universe had swallowed the Garden whole.

            Squall stared in fascination at the incredible weapons called burn cannons. The term was, in his opinion, an injustice. Had it been up to him, he would have named them something more befitting their raw strength. He had not seen such a display of power since Bahamut had fought Griever.

            A deafening roar that seemed to come from all around caused the floor of the bridge to vibrate menacingly. Seconds later, the Garden shook violently, as though it had collided with something. Even as a ghost, Squall had to fight to keep his footing.

            Commander Dane stumbled to Nida's side and bellowed over the din. "What's happening?"

            Nida was straining against the Garden's rudder. He could barely spare the breath to answer. "I don't know! Something is pulling us sideways!"

            "It's magnetic!" The tactical officer supplied. "Everything metal on the right side of the Garden is being attracted toward it!"

            "There goes all the forks in the mess hall," Nida commented sourly. "I fear for the cafeteria ladies."

            Dane appeared to be trying to fight off panic; the attitude warnings began to blare as the Garden tilted further sideways. "Are the burn cannons causing it?"

            "I don't think so," said the tactical SeeD. "It happened when everything went black."

            Squall's mind raced as he took in the conversation and he let his eyes flit over the navigation systems. They were mostly identical to the ones in the Garden he knew…

            "Commander! If we don't do something _now, _we're gonna capsize!"

            Squall had to climb the listing floor to get to where Rinoa crouched clutching the railing near the lift. She stared at him as he leaned near her. _The engines! _He urged her. She blinked at him in confusion. Snarling, he explained hurriedly. _The engines keep the Garden off the ground by making a repulsive magnetic field between themselves and the surface. Mess up the balance in the port engine, and it'll work backwards and pull us to the left! Go on, tell them to do it!_

            She shook her head. _I don't understand._

_            You don't have to! Just trust me!_

Fighting to keep her balance, Rinoa pulled herself to the front of the bridge, stopping by the engineer. She stared at the woman helplessly for a few seconds, as though she'd forgotten what to do.

_            Hurry, _Squall urged. _Tell her to reverse the polarity of the port engine. You don't have to understand what it means, but she will!_

            "Ary!" Rinoa could barely make her voice carry over the roaring and shrieking of the clouds and burn cannons. She had to punch the SeeD on the arm to get her attention. 

Startled, Ary turned and beamed, wide-eyed, at Rinoa. "Sorceress?!"

"Switch the polarity on the port engine!" Rinoa screamed, having no idea what she was saying, and praying it made sense to Ary.

The red-haired engineer's eyebrows raised in surprise, but then she seemed to understand the logic of the command and hurried to do as she was told. The Garden was almost on its side.

Instantly, the Garden shuddered, and a whine, like an engine straining, joined the cacophony. The floor stopped tilting, holding its place in a nearly vertical position. The bridge crew was hanging on to anything that would keep them from falling off the platform. With agonizing sluggishness, the Garden began to right itself.

Outside, the war of sound, light and darkness continued.

"All sections," Nida ordered reflexively over the intercom, "report to battle stations." The helmsman saw no reason to keep the Garden in the dark—forgiving the expression—about any possible danger. No one protested his judgement.

When he was finally able to stand without hanging onto the back of tactical's chair, Dane edged over to Rinoa and Ary. "What's going on?"

"I've altered the balance of the port engine," Ary replied readily. "With the polarity reversed, it's pulling that side of the Garden down instead of pushing it up. We're fighting the other pull, sir, but it's working."

Dane nodded, obviously relieved. "Good work."

"I wish I could take credit for it," Ary nodded to Rinoa. "It was The Sorceress' idea."

At this, Dane seemed shocked. "Is that so? Since when did you start studying Garden mechanics, Sorceress Rinoa?"

Shaken, Rinoa shook her head numbly. "I didn't. It…wasn't me…"

"What are you talking about?" Ary blinked. "I heard what you said—"

"I _said _it," Rinoa snapped, her patience as frayed as her wits, "but I didn't think of it…he…"

"He who?"

"_Squall!" _Frustrated, having tried to avoid telling them the truth but finally giving into the fact she could not do so without outright lying, Rinoa balled her fists stubbornly at her sides.

The tactical officer snorted. "Oh, perfect, she's doing it again. What, so now we're taking advice from the Cowardly Lion's specter?"

For a moment, no one on the bridge said anything. Everyone except Rinoa turned to stare at the tactical SeeD, who flushed, seeming to realize he'd made a grave mistake. The only sounds were the wail of the straining engines and the chaos outside.

Finally, Rinoa trained a black, razor-sharp stare on the tactical officer. At first, her lips moved, but any sound she may have made was lost in the ambiance. Then she spoke again, slowly, but her words were heard only by the tactical officer. The SeeD's eyes widened as he realized he was hearing her voice in his mind. 

_You…don't…_ever_…call him that._

            Meekly, the officer cowered in his seat. "Yes, Sorceress—" Then, catching himself, "I mean, _no, _Sorceress!" He looked ready to crumble where he sat.

            "Commander, look!"

            Nida's exclamation jarred them from the brief drama scene. All eyes turned to follow Nida's gaze.

            Far ahead, where the four burn cannon beams converged on an invisible horizon, was a crack in the blackness.

            At least, for all anyone on the bridge could tell, that's exactly what it was. Jagged fingers of sparkling blue splayed out in a small web from what could only be the edge of the cloud. The fracture seemed to originate where the beams impacted. 

            Then, before their eyes, it began to close.

            "Tactical—" Commander Dane barked, but the officer interrupted him.

            "That's it, sir. That's all the power she's putting out. I can't do any better than this!"

            Silent for a few long heartbeats, Dane suddenly turned to Rinoa. He said nothing, but his eyes asked his question for him.

            _What is it, _Squall demanded, scowling. _What does that…what does he want?_

            Never looking away from Dane, Rinoa closed her eyes and nodded. _Squall, please, don't interfere. _

_            Wait! What—_

She turned and stared at him fiercely. _You asked me to trust you and I did. Now you've got to trust me._

Squall shut his mouth, and his mind.

            Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Rinoa stepped to the middle of the bridge and faced forward. Dane moved out of her way. The rest watched her, but did not abandon their posts. The Sorceress glanced at each of them, her expression forceful. Squall felt she wanted no one—not him or anyone else—to come near her or say anything to her. It was clear everyone present was more than willing to allow her that respect. She tilted her head up a little and stared off into the darkness. One after the other, she folded her arms across her chest in the familiar **X **Squall knew indicated she was preparing to use some greater aspect of her sorceress abilities.

            He shivered and his legs almost buckled. Rinoa bowed her head and ethereal wings burst forth from her back. 

            Squall was used to the sensation, and weathered it reasonably well; even when Rinoa didn't use him to fuel her sorcery—which, most of the time, she did not—he could feel the flow of power when she did something substantial enough to unfurl the normally invisible wings. His heart leaped at the thought he would, once again, be the witness of her magic. If there was any power that brought him to his knees, it was this; not because it impressed him, but because he _knew _her power. He knew Rinoa. An act such as this was a potent reminder of what they were together, what only he could know about her, the things about him that only she could see. Watching Rinoa now, he saw not the power of her magic. It meant nothing. She was the only thing he saw. 

Alive or dead, he thought as he watched her spread her wings to full span, he was hers, and nothing could take that fact away from him. Not even the darkest of nightmares.

            As Rinoa spread her arms to the blackened sky, everyone in the room bowed their heads. For most, it was because her wings were glowing so brightly it was painful to look at them. For Squall, it was out of reverence. 

            The song of the burn cannons rose above the roar of the void, and the light coming from the sorceress and from the cannon's beams became too intense for anyone to keep their eyes open. The Garden shook again, but this time it was more from the backwash of power than anything else. Dane and the rest of the SeeDs hid their faces in their arms. Squall dropped to a crouch, weak from the thrilling sensation of Rinoa's magic. There was not much she could do to shield him from this, even if she had the concentration available to try. He was too close to her, their bond too strong for such a power play to not draw him in. 

            Over time, Squall regained his senses, and though the sensation was still rich, he took strength in it instead of letting himself being overwhelmed by it. Steadily, slowly, he stood up. He watched, Rinoa's power coursing through him and around him. Giving her a wide berth, he walked to stand in front of her that he might see her face.

            She was the image of an angel. Her head tilted back to the heavens, her eyes were closed. She saw only the magic now. Her wings spread as wide as they could, shimmering and glittering white. As Squall looked on, she began to rise off the floor, just a few inches, and it seemed that wind wafted through her feathers, though Squall could not feel it, nor did he see any other evidence of a breeze. She was so beautiful…terrible, wonderful beauty.

            A blue glow behind him interrupted his train of thought enough to make him glance out the window. He did a double-take and froze. What he saw astonished him.

            The burn cannons' output had quadrupled; the beams were now so wide they blended with each other, to become one massive battering ram of pure power. The glare of the weapons was so great, Squall could not see most of the blackness before him anymore. What he could see of it on the fading edges of the cannons—supercharged by Rinoa's magic—made him stare blankly, lips barely parted in an expression as close to awe as could ever be seen on Squall's face.

            The blackness was cracking and falling apart before his eyes, as if the Garden was pecking its way out of a massive eggshell. Beyond that…

The song of the burn cannons ceased abruptly. Blood red light suddenly flooded the bridge as the ceiling of the dark world around them shattered. At first Squall thought they would all be wiped out in some sort of cataclysmic explosion. A moment later, he realized the light was coming from—

            "They sky! There's the sky!"

            The voice was Ary's. Cheers erupted from the bridge crew. Squall almost forgot the fact that the breaking of the cloud meant escape from its nightmarish powers. He was too busy wondering how the world—the real world—could ever possibly sport such a hellish horizon.

            _The sky…what happened to it?_

A heavy thud brought his thoughts back to his immediate surroundings. Rinoa had collapsed in front of him, wings vanished, her strength spent. Squall knelt beside her and started to try and help her rise, but remembered just in time that he had no such power. He knew better than to offer her his strength; she would not expect it, and he would not force her to make such a delicate decision now. He knew she would recover with rest. So he stayed by her, motionless, watching her as the SeeDs around him celebrated. 

            To his surprise, Rinoa stirred and pushed herself up on one arm. She turned her head to look directly at him. Her weak voice in his mind startled him. _The sky…it's red because…because when Ultimecia burned the world, the fires raised red smoke that clouded the sun…it's been that way ever since._ She looked at the floor, strangely contemplative. _Some think the smoke carried the blood of the fire's victims, and that's why it was red…_ She closed her eyes and shivered.

            Squall started to say something, though he wasn't sure what. He never got the chance because Commander Dane crouched to help Rinoa to her feet.

            _Damn it, _was Squall's knee-jerk response, _leave her alone!_

            Rinoa waved him off with a discreet motion of her hand. _It's okay, Squall, _she assured him, erroneously assuming he was trying to protect her from physical harm. _I'll be all right._

            Squall stood with them, simmering inside as he watched Dane put his arm around Rinoa's shoulders—_to support her, _he told himself over and over again. _He's just helping her stand up. It makes sense…perfect sense…he'd do the same for anyone else. _

The Garden listed suddenly to the left.

            "Recalibrating the port engine," Ary announced. Squall barely heard her. He was too lost in the sight of Dane tightening his hold on Rinoa to keep her from falling.

            The Garden stabilized. Dane relaxed his grip.

Slowly, Squall forced himself to calm down as Dane led Rinoa to the balustrade so she might lean against it. Then the commander turned away from her and went back to his duties.

            "Sir," Nida reported. "I've got control again. Look, you can see water below us, now."

            "Head for that breach, Nida," Dane ordered. "Let's get out of here."

            "Like a bat out of hell."

            A cold, creeping fear chilled Squall's spirit. He could not identify it immediately, not until he registered the fact that they were about to _leave _their dark prison behind—and with it, any hope of returning to the life he once knew. It was then he took the time to look past the red sky and out into this new world.

            Or at least, what was left of it.

            Contravening his lifeless state, Squall began to feel sick. Though there was still some distance between the Garden and the gaping opening in the darkness, he could see enough through that malicious maw to know he didn't particularly want to see any more. Beyond the hole, the shores of a desolate island were visible. The land looked utterly dead; dry, devoid of any foliage, and as morbidly red as the sky above.

            _What now, _Squall thought with growing despair, _out of the frying pan, into the fire?_ _Do I escape one hell and wind up stuck in another?_

            "Rinoa," he murmured suddenly, "tell them to stop."

            Despite his quiet voice, Rinoa heard him and pinned him with an exhausted stare. "What…?"

            Ary turned in her seat. "Did you say something, Sorceress?"

            Rinoa shook her head. "No, nothing." To Squall, she snipped, _What do you mean, 'tell them to stop'? Are you _nuts?!

            Squall looked from her, to the dead world ahead, and back. "No…I…I need to..." He stammered a little and stopped. Needed to what? He recanted his earlier thoughts and reorganized them before attempting to speak them aloud. "No," he reaffirmed after a few seconds. "Rinoa, if you leave the cloud, we'll never get back!"

            _That's the point, isn't it?_

"But—"

            _Squall, we're not going back._

            "Commander!" It was Nida. All eyes turned toward her. "The darkness, it's curling around the edges! I think it's trying to become that cloud again."

Rinoa answered before Dane could. "So step on it."

Squall moved toward her, his eyes pleading. _"Rinoa!!"_

Finally steady on her feet, Rinoa could not bear any more chaos. She shook her head and clapped her hands over her ears. "Please!" Worried gazes turned in her direction. Fighting tears, she edged toward the lift. "I'm sorry…I have to go rest for a while." Not waiting for anyone to respond, she stepped onto the lift and, Squall hurrying to follow before he could be left behind, abandoned Balamb Garden's bridge.

The lift touched the floor below. Without a word, The Sorceress vanished into the main elevator.

Commander Dane sighed. A fatigued expression played across his features. Self-consciously, he straightened the worry lines around his eyes and looked toward the SeeD sitting at tactical. 

"Officer," he hailed the man, who turned nervously in his chair. "May I have a word with you in private?

The tactical SeeD hung his head. He knew that tone coming from Commander Dane. It was the same tone that had earned the man the nickname "Commander Doom." 

"Yes, sir," he acknowledged quietly, and inwardly resigned himself to his fate.

  
* 

            Rinoa stormed through the door to her room, moving almost too quickly for it to open fast enough. Squall wasn't far behind. "Don't I have _any _say in this?"

She stopped at the window and whirled on him. "No! You don't!" He halted abruptly to keep from touching her. Unperturbed, she stood up straighter, almost on her tiptoes, until she was in his face. "You have _no _support in this world _whatsoever. _I can't protect you from it, and I can't change it. Bottom line: You're dead, everyone hates you, and the world's about to end. _Any questions?!_" A hair's breadth from a breakdown, she trembled, turned away and sat heavily on the edge of her bed, nearly collapsing onto her side in the process. She kept herself propped up on one elbow and wrestled valiantly with the tears invading her eyes.

Squall looked on, his face an emotionless mask. Rinoa lost her battle with despair and hung her head, crying softly. He waited, motionless, until he was certain the last of her tears had touched the dampened bed covers. He decided not to speak his next words, folding his arms meanwhile. _That's a pretty sorry prognosis. _

Still not looking at him, Rinoa sat up slowly, pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them as if hugging a long lost child. It took a few minutes for her to work up the courage to look at him again. When she did, there was little more than pity and sadness in her eyes. Had Squall been in the reality he remembered, her pity would have angered him. Here, it was just another harsh reality in an unforgiving world. 

"They don't understand," she muttered quietly, as if in response to an unjust court verdict. "They don't know you…they think you're just a slack-off whiz kid who never did anything virtuous in his life. They don't know what you're made of. _Everyone _thinks you're a traitor, Squall…"

Squall raised one hand half-heartedly like a tired schoolboy.

Almost smiling at the vaguely comical action, Rinoa nodded her permission for him to speak. "Yes?"

Squall attempted to sound as meek as possible, something he didn't accomplish very well, but it was a good effort on his part. "_Everyone?_"

Rinoa bit her lip, her hard expression faltering, and shook her head. "No…not everyone."

Leaning back against the nearby window (since it was convenient and he knew he wouldn't fall through it), the ghost growled at himself, leaning his face into his hand. "…I'm beginning to really hate what I became here."

"I don't," she returned sharply, startling him. Then with equally surprising gentleness, added, "But I'm wondering what happened to him."

Again putting his hand to his face, resting his knuckles against his scarless forehead, Squall swore he had a headache, though he couldn't feel any recognizable pain. "I don't know…I don't know anything anymore." A red glow filled the room. He looked over his shoulder, out the window. The Garden had cleared the cloud. _That's it, _he thought helplessly, _I can't ever go back…_

"Is it really that important to you?"

            He fixed Rinoa with a weary stare. He shook his head, waving his hand slightly. "I'm not sure…" His eyes wandered to the gunblade displayed on the wall. "I got scared of losing the chance to go back. It's selfish, though. At first…the only things that were real were you and me. Then I met Simone." He scowled at the floor a few feet in front of him, staring at the air as if the child he spoke of were standing there. "I can't…she made me understand it. This world is just as real. They're the same. The only thing that's changed is the history. Maybe something altered it. Maybe it was the cloud." He swiveled on his heels, meaning to look out the window, but stopped halfway, facing Rinoa, her simple presence halting him as though she had reached out and grabbed him. "This is what's real now," he told her. "I don't think it's a dream anymore. Even if going back to the cloud would change things…I can't ask you to leave Simone. If you go by what I remember, she never even existed…" He trailed off, closed his eyes, trying to picture his life as he'd known it. But the images were fading, distant, as if they really were nothing more than failing dreams. "No Ultimecia…no world war. I don't know if I'd trade Simone for that. Even if it means I've gotta learn to live as a…ghost, whatever, I can't turn my back on this. I can't think about everything I've lost…what's important is what I've got to lose." He turned toward his mounted gunblade again, but inclined his head slightly over his shoulder, watching Rinoa from the corners of his eyes.

            She had been listening intently, and she seemed genuinely interested in everything he had to say to her. The tears and the anger were both gone from her visage. Squall hesitated. Tentatively, he tried to feel something—anything—from her. He got nothing. But she was too honest to lie with her eyes. He dared to hope she was actually taking him seriously.

            "The last time I heard you say that—about what you have to lose—was the last time you said _anything _to me for five months."

            Squall faced her, blinking slowly. He said nothing.

            "Are you going to do this to me again?"

            Her knight shook his head once. Somewhere in his darkened soul, a spark of hope flared. This was the first verbatim clue about the mindset of the Squall he was supposed to be. It was a good clue that spoke volumes, but he decided to contemplate its meaning later. For now, what mattered was keeping true to his silent vow. "…Never."

            Rinoa stood, walking to within easy conversational distance. She reached out and brushed her fingers across—and partially through—his chest. They both trembled at the icy sensation. Eerie thoughts tantalized Squall's mind, images of Rinoa's hand reaching into him, touching a cold, lifeless heart. He closed his eyes, drinking in the chill, mourning the loss.

"Everyone has accused you of a lot," Rinoa whispered. "Maybe you're guilty of some things. But you're not a traitor," she declared firmly. "And you're not a liar. You never have been to anyone. So…I believe you. When you say you don't remember this life, I promise to believe you from now on, okay? I believe what you just told me. If you have anything else to tell me, I'll listen to that, too. I'll be your champion." She smiled at his startled expression. "Three years ago, you were mine when no one else believed in me."

            Squall squared his jaw and willed himself not to choke. The warmth her words was almost enough to banish the cold touch of her fingertips. "I wish…" He shook his head. He could not finish. _Thank you._

            Squall and Rinoa stood motionless for long minutes, neither able to speak nor having anything to say that could adequately be put to words. Squall wondered if his sorceress knew what he was thinking and feeling. Rinoa was wondering the same about her knight. 

            "It's hell," Squall said quietly. "I can't touch, I can't feel…" He laughed weakly, a sickly, maddened giddiness coming over him. It was all just too much. How could any situation be so hopeless? "Once…people would say that about me, but it meant something different. I never let myself get close to anyone. They reached out to me, but no one could touch me. I wouldn't let them. Then you showed up. You changed everything." He shook his head at the cruel irony of it all. "Now…I can't. Not even you." He closed his eyes and slowly backed away from her.

The words were so soft, so weary with pain and even a hint of resignation, Rinoa felt her eyes start to sting again. She reached after him, but he avoided her, as if reenacting the alien past he spoke of.

"I think…maybe I went mad in this place," he murmured, feeling sick just to say it. "I'm not any better at being alone…I can act like it doesn't bother me, but it's all a lie. It's stupid to pretend it's all right…but I can't reach out and touch you, either. It's…I don't have to tell you what it's like. You already understand." 

She closed her eyes sadly. "…I understand." She grasped the ring on her necklace—only one ring, Squall noticed. Not two. "But, Squall…there's more than one way to touch someone."

Something in her voice made him forget the ring issue. He caught her stare and held it. 

"Touch someone's body, and it affects their life," she whispered. "Touch their mind, and it affects their future. Touch someone's heart—" She placed on hand on her chest, and before he could move away laid the other on his the best she could. "—it changes their soul." She smiled in spite of herself, an expression that seemed blatantly out of place in the bloody light streaming in from the window. On anyone else, it might have looked sinister. "It's easy to take a life. With a little more work, you can even direct someone's future. But you can never own a person's soul unless they give it to you willingly. Once that's done…it's forever." Her head bowed, she stared at her feet. "Even when everything else is taken away. That's why this happened. Ultimecia took your life. Being separated like this tortured your mind—both of us—but we can never give up what we are. Now…" She glanced out the window. "That cloud has changed you. It's given you different memories." She gestured to his forehead, where the supposed scar should lie. "But who you are is the same. If that wasn't true, we wouldn't still be talking like this. You're still…the Squall I know. I, have to admit…when I think about it now, I'm…glad." She looked away, feeling ashamed. "You have hope again. It happened when I was beginning to think there wasn't any left in anyone. In a way, getting trapped in that cloud is the best thing that's ever happened to me since you died." Her shoulders twitched strangely. "You're convinced this isn't a dream? I think it's true…you're the same Squall as the one who refused to say anything to me for five months. I realized it up there, on the bridge. You may have saved all our lives. And it doesn't even bother you that no one gave you credit for it. Not as much as it hurts me, when people call you names and act like you're the source of all our problems. If they hate you so much, I don't know why they keep _me _around…sometimes I think it's just because I'm a sorceress."

Squall frowned, fighting the wish to hit something. This was exactly the kind of post-mortem nonsense he hated. Having once been terrified of people talking about him after he'd died, now it was simply insulting, and seeing how much it pained Rinoa made him that much angrier. He'd always been afraid that something like this or worse would happen; he would be turned by hype into something he was not, and what people remembered about him would forever be a skewed image. He'd always heard others say—while trying to be reassuring, of all things—that the deceased continued to live on as long as they were remembered by someone. But lived on as what? If the only things that remained of someone were memories, what happened to that person when those memories were inaccurate or prejudiced? Squall had always hated the idea of being turned into a saint or a demon by no choice of his own, simply at the whim of other people's perceptions of who he was. He had always believed everyone made their own destiny. What happened when one was no longer alive to determine what that destiny had been? 

Squall was this or wasn't that. How disgusting. What right did anyone have to judge him? More importantly, what right had they to judge Rinoa because of him? 

            _You're gonna have to explain to me what happened,_ he thought to her. He did not trust himself to speak, afraid his words would come out in a growl to match his irritation. _Why do people think I'm a traitor? I'm dead. What the hell do they care? _Despite his efforts, a hostile note crept into even his mental tone. 

_They need someone to blame… _Finally pulling away from him, Rinoa's consciousness took a short sabbatical out the window, contemplating Squall's request and his questions. "Take a walk with me?" she suggested suddenly, blinking but not looking away from the window.

"Yeah." Squall started to walk toward the door.

"Not that way."

Halted in mid-step, he tossed a quizzical look at his sorceress.

No longer watching the crimson sky, Rinoa smiled just a little. "They think I'm resting. I don't want the commander to find out I'm wandering around." Her expression darkened into one of vague annoyance. "I don't feel like putting up with his mothering. I'm sick of him reprimanding me for everything I do…makes me wanna hang him by his shirttail from the ceiling of the training center."

Squall did his best not to smile at the mental image that manifested in his mind: the arrogant Dane, a squirming morsel dangling fifty feet in the air, just out of leaping distance of several hungry rexaurs. Though amusing, he decided to keep his jealous thoughts to himself. Given the circumstances, Dane should consider himself lucky Squall was dead. When he felt so inclined, Squall could render a pack of rexaurs preferable company. The mere mention of the commander made his blood boil. _He'd wish he'd been hung by the time I got through with him…_

But he shared none of this with Rinoa. Instead, he asked, calmly, "Then how do we get out?"

"I'll poof myself there. You'll have to follow."

Squall raised an eyebrow. "'Poof?'" 

She shrugged, grinning sheepishly. "Its what I call it. I think 'teleport' sounds funny."

A hint of a smile played at Squall's lips. "Poof," he repeated.

Rinoa feigned indignity. "Is there a problem?"

He shook his head, folded his arms, regarding her with a bemused smirk. "Now I've heard it all."

 "Just for that, I'm not going to make it easy on you." Inclining her head and staring meaningfully at the ceiling to her left, Rinoa appeared to mull over a suitable punishment. "I'm not telling you where I'm going," she announced, a smug glint in her eyes. "You'll have to find me."

Squall frowned. He wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. "What does that m—"

In answer, Rinoa vanished into thin air. _Catch me if you can! _

Having no ability that he knew of to "poof" himself anywhere, Squall snarled quietly. So she was going to make him run around the Garden like an idiot looking for her, while she could just spirit herself anywhere she pleased in the blink of an eye. _Perfect. _He scowled accusingly at the door.

Muttering something about how power corrupts and the dangers of perfunctory sorcery, Squall stalked out of Rinoa's quarters, not even blinking as he passed unhindered through the oblivious doors. 

  
* 

Rinoa had not exaggerated when she declared she wouldn't make herself easy to find.

The first place he'd thought to look was, of course, the library, Rinoa's defacto hangout in the Garden whenever she had time to kill or wished to be left alone. But a cursory search of the place revealed no sorceress, and some suspicious blue graffiti on the back of one of the bookshelves that read "Not here." Uncertain if this was coincidence, all doubt of the vandal's identity was annulled when he tried the quad. Before he'd even reached the recreation area, a SeeD passed him with the warning "Wrong way" written in clear red lettering across his forehead—apparently without his knowledge. As other SeeDs in the breezeway snickered and coughed, Squall half-turned to watched the SeeD, who could be no older than seventeen by his judgement, and wondered what the poor sap had done to Rinoa to compel her to so desecrate his forehead. Giving up on the quad, Squall wore his smirk all the way back to the main dome. 

He systematically checked every wing of the Garden's main level. There was a sticky note in the infirmary that instructed him to "keep looking," and a menu item in the cafeteria read "Not even close," but Squall grew more determined with each failed attempt and taunt. He even tried the garage, but quickly turned back when the sign that normally marked the area as "parking" instead posed the question, "You're kidding, right?"

That left the training center. And though she had mentioned it earlier, Squall seriously doubted Rinoa whisked herself into the dinosaur-infested enclosure. No, he decided, she was somewhere else, not mixed in with the general mill of people.

Then he remembered: Rinoa had a dog. He cast about for a clock. 1400 had always been lunch time for Angelo. He finally found the time by peering over one student's shoulder to get a glimpse of her watch. It was 2:15 in the afternoon. Bingo.

Squall hurried for the front entrance, remembering that Angelo's run had been located around the corner of the courtyard. He found no blatant "signs" along the way to indicate he should turn back, and this encouraged him. He'd only just traversed the stairs leading to the courtyard when a large tan and black dog lunged from between two decorative topiaries, barking and snarling menacingly at him—_at _him?

Squall halted with a forward lurch, and backed up a few paces, glancing over his shoulder to be sure there was nothing else the dog might be barking at. There was no one else at the corner. Squall stared at the growling canine in astonishment. Could it _see _him?

The dog stared right back into his eyes, curling its lips, its legs spread out in an aggressive display. Had Squall not known better, he would have been intimidated by the animal's posture. Instead, he relaxed and looked away, beyond the dog, deciding not to incite it further by trying to stare it down.

As if on cue, Rinoa stepped around the corner. She was breathing hard, having chased the dog all the way from the run. She knelt by the angry creature and attempted gently to calm him down. "Simon! What's gotten into you? Stop it now…" She stroked his bristled shoulders, laying her arm across his powerful chest as if to hold him back. 

Squall stared furtively at the dog from the corners of his eyes. He had no doubts that, should Simon try to attack him, Rinoa would not have a fraction of the physical strength necessary to hold the dog at bay. Not that it particularly mattered.

Simon was a very large black- and wheat-colored Centran Shepherd, a robust breed renowned for its intelligence and unwavering loyalty. He was limber but powerfully muscled, and likely weighed close to ninety pounds. Large, triangular black ears pricked atop Simon's high head. Black, shrewd eyes, one of which was almost camouflaged in a patch of dark fur, stared at Squall down a sloping, strong muzzle. Powerful shoulders and haunches braced to leap at him if he made a false move. The dog's tapering tail was raised in excitement, but made no wag of goodwill. Simon seemed convinced Squall was a threat.

Rinoa tugged Simon back, whispering reassurances to him. "I don't understand," she said apologetically. "He doesn't usually act like this around you."

"He can see me," Squall observed aloud, but there was an underlying question in his tone.

"Don't ask me how, because I don't know." Rinoa relaxed a little, as Simon was finally doing the same. He had ceased snarling and was sitting, but his ears still laid back every now and again and he watched Squall with obvious distrust. "No one else has noticed you, not even animals…but he usually isn't like this." She scratched Simon between his ears, a treat he obviously enjoyed; despite himself, his tail wagged happily. "He loves people."

"Just not dead people, I guess." Squall smirked, but not unkindly. He'd meant the comment as a joke. "After Angelo, it's hard to picture you with a brute like that."

"He's _not _a brute!" Rinoa pulled Simon's muzzle to face her and scratched his furry neck as she cooed affectionately. "Are you? No, you're not a brute, you're just a tough guy. Like someone else I know…" She cast a wry look over her shoulder. "After all, Simon was your idea."

Squall scoffed. "Yeah. I'm not a dog person…" He waited for more than a minute for her to answer, finally unable to silently stand the sad expression in her eyes. "What really happened to Angelo?"

Rinoa hugged Simon, who offered her a sympathetic whine and a cold, wet nose in her face. Smiling weakly, she wiped her face with the back of her hand and scratched between his ears again. "He was in an accident," she said, her smile fading. "We were in Timber…it was after the trains had started up again. We were found out by the Galbadian soldiers and they ambushed us by the west bridge. You were fighting one of them. Angelo jumped him and tried to distract him, but…the soldier threw him off…broke his leg…" Her eyes grew distant, widening a little as the terrifying memory replayed in her mind. "You tried to stop the soldier, but he got under you and pushed you. Angelo was right on the edge of the rail pit. You fell into him." Her voice started to break up, and she paused, giving herself time to pull herself together. Finally, she continued in quick, staccato syllables. "Angelo broke your fall, but he fell onto the tracks. We didn't know it, but there was a train coming about five minutes away. We were trying to get down to get him off the tracks when it came. With his leg, he couldn't get out of the way." She stood slowly, though she kept her hand rested atop Simon's head. "It was very quick," she concluded. 

Squall's eyes narrowed, and he denied himself any other reaction to the horrific story. He did not apologize. If the Squall he was supposed to be was anything like him, he would have already done so, and apologizing did not fix anything.

Rinoa looked down at her canine companion. "A month later, you bought Simon and gave him to me. At first I didn't want him…but then someone else told me you'd bought him from a breeder who was going to kill him because he was the runt. And…after a few days, I couldn't make myself get rid of him. He didn't grow up to be so runty." Her eyes and mouth a collection of hard, straight lines, she turned her gaze on Squall. "The two best gifts you ever gave me were Simon and Simone."

Squall looked away, wondering in his embarrassment if ghosts could blush. He felt ashamed and he wasn't sure exactly why. "Then I was a moron. Not that I regret this, but…" He tilted his head a little, briefly. He went back to staring at the walkway. He realized too late he'd let the wrong words slip. 

"There is…a reason." Rinoa choked off her words, surprised and stung by Squall's reaction. She tried not to be angry, tried to tell herself that as far as Squall was concerned, this world was strange and alien, that everything he knew to be true had been turned upside down and inside out. It was understandable that he should feel a little resentful. 

But how could he ever call Simone's creation moronic?

Squall sat down on the wall beside one of the topiaries, as silent as Rinoa's tears. He had lost count of how many times he'd made her cry today. Years ago, he'd have thought her weak and melodramatic for it. That had been before he'd understood how impassioned she was, how deeply she was affected by those close to her. For Rinoa, there was nothing else but those things. And she was not afraid to love, not afraid to laugh or cry. When she was moved, she hid nothing. In Squall's universe, there were warriors, and there were those who were vulnerable. Rinoa was the only person he had ever known who could effectively be both at the same time. Somehow, her weaknesses made her heart as reliable as stone.

Rinoa always allowed herself to feel, but she had learned not to let her emotions overwhelm her for long. A few moments of silent tears and staring at the sidewalk, and she had regained herself. She did not speak another word of Simone. "There's a reason people think you're a traitor," she finished her previous sentence, her voice once again steady. "It's not the truth, but they believe it, because they have nothing better to believe." A motion to an antsy Simon sent the dog trotting to the other side of the walkway to sniff around, though he stayed carefully within sight of Squall. "Trapping Ultimecia here only limited her terror to this time…we never defeated her. She killed so many people when she found out she no longer had access to the Junction Machine Ellone."

"So Ellone was also kidnapped here for Odine's research…"

"Kidnapped?" Rinoa seemed confused. "I don't know about anything like that. You talked about her a lot, but you never told me she was kidnapped."

"Maybe it's..." He trailed off. He'd been about to say 'just my world,' but rethinking that statement, it seemed inaccurate, or at least incongruent with what he wanted to convey. He decided to stop making a point of differentiating between this reality and that of his memories. There was no way he could do that without in some way belittling the validity of either version of history. Squall's expression hardened further. He was who he was. Which history had led up to it or whether or not it was real did not matter. No one could own a timeline, and likewise he belonged to no single reality. 

A tucked-away corner of his mind reeled with disillusionment. Ultimecia had wanted to control time, and so control reality, control history. By fighting her, Squall had earned his right to live this nightmare; without Ultimecia, or something else to control the flow of history, no future could be certain. Which was worse, he wondered, knowing for fact that your future was damned, or not being certain about any future at all? What was the price to be paid to choose one's own destiny? "Before I was born," he began again, leaving out all pretenses, "Ellone was captured by Esthar and Odine studied her abilities so he could make a machine that created windows in time…later, when I was just a kid, Ellone and I were separated. It…hurt me. But that's not important right now. You were telling me what happened..." He waved the subject away.

Rinoa let the matter drop, oblivious to his epiphanies, and continued with her explanation. "Ultimecia absorbed the spirits of all the people she killed, and she continues to do it. Anyone who won't serve her runs the risk of being slaughtered and then enslaved." She knelt as Simon brought her a ball he'd dug out of a nearby hedge (a habit of his, much to the annoyance of the landscapers). Tossing the ball down the less-used branch of the walkway, the better to avoid the possibility of someone crashing headlong into Simon as he gave chase, Rinoa watched him bounce excitedly after the toy. "The day after her massacre…the souls she enslaved were visible in the sky, and people could hear them crying…Squall, they were screaming your name." 

Having stared at the ground up until this point, Squall jerked his head up, abhorrence creeping into his scowl. "My name? Did they say anything else?"

"That you'd betrayed them to Ultimecia, escaped her wrath, and they wanted revenge."

His eyes narrowed darkly. "Did I?"

Rinoa shook her head emphatically. "No! No, you…if anyone betrayed them, I did, by saving you and bringing her here. But that wasn't much of a choice…if I let her take you, she would  have triumphed over time as well as the world. Now at least, she's confined here…if there is a future beyond this."

"If they were under her control, it's possible Ultimecia forced them all to say whatever she wanted them to." Squall postulated. "If she wanted to hurt you by destroying support for me, I wouldn't put that past her."

"That's what _I _said." Rinoa took the ball Simon had retrieved for her and threw it again, as she'd done twice already during their conversation. "But the evidence was against you…I don't have anything that proves you exist. It's amazing how gullible people are. They'll believe most things they see, and some things they hear, but when they see it _and _hear it…" She shook her head, at a loss for unnecessary words.

"There isn't a way you can…make me visible?" He hardly dared the question; it seemed to Squall that if there had been, Rinoa would have done it already.

"I don't even know exactly why _I _can see you…or why Simon can."

Standing, Squall moved toward the less-traveled walkway…and promptly found Simon blocking his path. Simon did not bark this time, but planted himself firmly between Squall and Rinoa. He growled a warning.

Sighing, Rinoa scratched between the dog's ears. "Speak of the devil…here, let me try something." She pointed at the ground Simon stood on. "Stay," she commanded, then turned toward Squall. "That goes for you too," she said quickly before he could come toward her. "Both of you…don't move a muscle." Squall had a faint memory of having such a command given to him in Angelo's presence, but thankfully the details of that embarrassment were hazy. He stood still.

It was Rinoa who walked up to Squall. Simon whined uneasily, but he did not disobey her stern command. Ignoring the ensuing chill, she hooked her arm around Squall's and smiled.

Simon stamped his feet a few times, confused, looking from Rinoa to the ghost and back. Then, finally deciding his friend was in no danger, he settled back onto his haunches.

"There," Rinoa piped, and quickly drew her arms away. "See, as long as I'm okay with you, he is, too."

"Glad to know you approve." Squall was still eyeing Simon uncertainly, half-expecting him to become protective again the moment Rinoa let go of him. To his surprise, the canine made no objections when Squall edged toward the walkway. In fact, he fell in step between sorceress and knight, though he showed no particular affection for the latter. Which was fine as far as Squall was concerned; being ignored was much preferable to being attacked, even if he stood no chance of injury. For some reason it was important that Simon did not think him a threat.

"Maybe he can tell there's something different about you," Rinoa was saying as they walked. The path they followed now led to a lesser-known area of the Garden, an aviary. Rinoa had told Squall during breakfast that there were no longer birds in the glass-walled enclosure, but the foliage was still maintained and made for a useful hideout during the busier hours of the day. "So what is it? What's changed?"

 "I don't know," was the honest answer. "I don't understand the thinking of…who I once was. I don't have anything to compare it to, so I don't know what's different." He thought bitterly of his apparent decision to stop speaking to Rinoa. "I know that…what he…what _I _did doesn't make any sense. Not to me. It…sounds like someone else."

"You said you were separated from Ellone when you were little?" Sensing the current subject matter was hurting him, Rinoa attempted to change the subject.

"She was taken away when I was five. I spent a long time thinking it was my fault she'd left. I made myself believe that if I could prove I would be okay all by myself, she would come back. I kept away from friendships if I could help it. But I forgot why I acted that way. Once I'd grown up, it was just another part of me…then I met you." He ended it there, as if that explained everything.

"And?" Rinoa prodded.

"And…it's a long story. I'm not very good at explaining things like that. It took a long time…" _And it…hurts to remember. _Squall's shoulders slumped just a little. _Those memories are precious to me…but they don't mean a damn thing to anyone else._

They mean a lot to me…please try, Squall. 

            It was a plea he'd heard Rinoa make so many times in the past, and it always worked. Never once had he refused to try at her behest. Never once had he failed. "When I first saw you…you were in the middle of the dance floor in the ballroom, at my graduation. You asked me to dance. You wouldn't take no for an answer." Wry amusement sparkled in his dark expression. "I complained the whole time, but you taught me a few steps…when you left, I thought that was the last I'd seen of you. But my first mission as a SeeD was going to be helping your resistance effort…didn't expect it…" 

            They arrived at the birdless aviary. Rinoa opened the door and held it for Simon and Squall, who still hadn't grown comfortable enough with the idea of passing through walls to abstain from using doors when they were available.

            "Sounds the same, except for a few things." Rinoa stood with her hands behind her back, her head tilted to one side, peering at him curiously. "The way I remember it, you were the one who asked me to dance. And you arranged having yourself assigned to the Forest Owls mission, just so you could see me again."

            Squall rolled his eyes. "I don't know that person," he insisted. It sounded to him more like something Irvine—or even Seifer—would do…

            What had happened to the bastard, anyway?

            He folded his arms. "Did you ever meet a guy named Seifer?" he ventured hesitantly.

            Rinoa thought, her eyes rolling in a visible attempt to rack her memory. "Never heard of him," she decided.

            So many things were missing. "When did I start acting like an idiot?"

            "I'm sorry?"

            Squall pretended to be interested in a nearby bush. "You want me to be explicit?"

            Unable to stop a short burst of laughter, Rinoa waited for it to subside before answering. "Oh, I understand. Well…let me think…"

            _You mean you have to think about it? _Squall winced. _If I wasn't already dead, I'd kill me for being—_

            "Probably around the time we were headed for Trabia."

            "Someone shoot me."

            "Wouldn't do much good." Rinoa grinned, enjoying the flippant exchange. "Now…that's more like the you I remember."

            He lightly cut the air in front of him. "What was normal for me here, you had to drag out of me in my reality."

            "You were that bad?"

            "That was gonna be _my _question."

            Giggling again, Rinoa beckoned him down the cobblestone path through the aviary. "Come on."

He followed willingly, feeling some of the heaviness lift from his mind. It seemed an eternity since he'd had such a lighthearted discussion with Rinoa. He wished she had his memories. At least then they could share the loss he felt. While Rinoa had lost nothing that hadn't already been taken from her, Squall was left with no one to share his pain. Everyone he had ever befriended might as well have died, and no one, not even Rinoa, remembered them. She could sympathize with him only to the extent she could acknowledge his pain, but she could not commiserate with him. Not unless she dared to touch his soul, something he knew she was still too frightened to try. 

His voice quieted in his seriousness as he posed his next question; he might as well, since he seemed to be on a roll and Rinoa was in the mood to answer. "Why did I stop talking to you?"

Instantly solemn, she slowed her pace. "I'm not sure why." She nervously scratched Simon's head. "I know before it happened, you were…upset. But we made a promise not to read each other's thoughts if the other didn't want it, so I didn't."

Squall winced. Promises, promises. It seemed every promise he had ever made to anyone had eventually come back to haunt him. _I gotta quit doing stuff like that._

Rinoa didn't perceive his internal grumbling. "You became more and more depressed…I know it hurt you when people started saying you were a traitor and didn't believe I can still talk to you. It was so sad…"

"Sad enough you made me promise not to touch you?" It was that promise thing again.

Rinoa shivered a little as she walked. "It's not that simple. I don't know how to say it."

"…Try?" He hoped she'd return the favor, though the grief in her voice made him fear her answer.

Time crawled. Squall began to wonder how long they had been talking. He tried to banish the nagging feeling that he was keeping Rinoa from being somewhere. If he had been breathing, a break from work such as this would be unheard of, not without having first scheduled it, and then notifying anyone who might be affected by the change in plans. From what he could gather, Rinoa had no defined schedule, rather she had a mental list of things to be done and she did them, one at a time, in order of priority. It baffled him that there was room in Garden for such a seat-of-the-pants agenda, particularly for someone as overtly involved in the everyday workings of SeeD as Rinoa apparently was.

_So different,_ Squall caught himself realizing yet again as he stared up through the glass ceiling at the looming red sky. It was a fact that no longer startled him, but it still moved him. _What am I supposed to do with my memories?_

"There was a time I could touch you," Rinoa whispered suddenly, stalling his silent questions and drawing the attention of his eyes and ears, "when all I felt was warmth…then you started shutting me out. You went cold…"

"Shut you out?"

They had stopped walking. She nodded wordlessly, stepping into the middle of a red circle on the pathway; in a moment Squall realized the circle was a sunbeam, bleeding through a congruent ceiling window that was more translucent than the others. Standing in the macabre light, bitterness mixing dangerously with the smoldering reflection in her eyes, the Sorceress looked too much like that terrible woman who had so desecrated the sky. 

_Because of me. _Squall's eyes opened a little wider, though his brow furrowed at his infuriating thoughts. _She changed because I did. There's nothing else that makes any sense!_ Doing his best to keep his tone level, Squall scowled darkly at Rinoa, into the scarlet sunlight that bloodied the edges of her black hair. "Just thinking I could be that weak…it pisses me off."

_Traitor!_

Abject terror clawed at Squall's psyche like a rabid beast. For an instant, he saw it in Rinoa's eyes—the evil, the pure wild hatred, blood, fire. He could see Ultimecia, standing in Rinoa's place. 

Then it was gone.

Rinoa answered him readily, nothing unusual having touched her senses. Her voice was soft and encouraging as ever, but in contrast with the vision it seemed like a mockery. "You aren't weak. I don't think you ever were. You were just…too confused to know what to do."

Squall looked over his shoulder at the foliage to his right, every shadow suspect. The experience had been so sudden and so brief, he was hardly able to respond to it, though it had racked him to his core. "…I thought you said I was depressed?" It was a filler question, intended to keep Rinoa talking so she wouldn't notice he was collecting himself. A bird chirped somewhere. Hadn't Rinoa told him there were no birds left in the aviary?

"When I first met you, you were…I don't know. Something. Something different than _this._"

"Yeah? How?" Squall waited, not for her answer. Nothing else happened. He heard no more birds. No more voices. The vision was gone. He began to wonder if it wasn't just another dream, another illusion. _Maybe I really am insane…_

"Well…I don't know," Rinoa was saying, and Squall finally calmed himself down enough to actively listen to her again. Throughout it all, his expression had changed little; despite his condition, he'd felt somehow that to allow his composure to break at that moment would forfeit someone's survival. He did not know whose. "You were so sure of yourself. You always had something witty to say. When I was with you, I felt like I could take on anything."

Squall glared at her grimly. He forgot about the voice. The subject of their conversation had suddenly arched to a greater matter. _Seifer. The way she's describing me…is the way she described _Seifer! Stung, he mentally replayed the past two 'irrelevant' answers she'd given him. "I don't think you even know what you're talking about," he accused, his voice as rigid as his stance, pointedly level.

Rinoa frowned, incredulous, uncomprehending of the reason for his ire. "What?" Simon, sensing her unease, came to her side. He growled a warning to Squall.

Who irately dashed the air with his hand. "You talk about how I made _you _feel…how _you _thought when you were around me, how I _acted_…you haven't once said anything that matters." _Seifer…if you had met him in this reality, would we even be here talking? He didn't know anything…too arrogant to let himself learn…even more insecure than I was._ _He lost it, so… _He shook his head, trying to fling his jealousy away. "If you knew," he growled, "if you'd open up enough to listen…you'd understand what I'm talking about. What you're describing isn't love. It's affection. There's a big difference."

It was not embarrassment that colored Rinoa's cheeks. "So that's it, then. You've already decided it. I'm not in love with you, and I never was."

Again Squall shook his head. "I never said that."

"Then what _are _you saying!" 

_You lied to me… _

Squall managed to keep from reacting outwardly this time, recognizing the accusing voice as the same one as before. Suspiciously, he cast a long glance to the side, searching for anyone else in the vicinity. He saw nothing but plants. But he kept up his debate with Rinoa; he knew without a doubt now, the itinerant whisper in his mind was not hers. "…I'm not sure."

Her mouth dropped open an inch or two, astonished that was the best answer he could come up with. Making a dramatic display of looking up at the ceiling, she seemed to be begging any interested deity to lend her patience. "Oh, well _that _fixes it."

Squall attempted to sort some vestige of rational thought out from his anger at being inadvertently likened to Seifer and his confusion at the seemingly random voice in his head that had been accusing him of things. He succeeded only in rearranging the disorder. "…I…I think it's _possible…_that you loved something you didn't see." When had this become an argument about love? He couldn't remember. _Damn it, what did I just say?_

"Care to say that in a language I understand?"

Squall was mentally floundering. He could not seem to keep track of the conversation. He was too distracted.

Did you think I would not notice! 

_That voice… _Squall closed his eyes, trying to remember. _Where have I heard it? _

"Squall?"

"Just a second," he snapped. "I have to think…" _I know you. _

Foolish child. You knew you kould not hide forever! 

It clicked. Everything suddenly fell into place—the reason he'd stopped speaking to Rinoa was clear and terrible as the scarlet sunlight. He knew it all without having to know. The identity of the voice and the few words it had spoken had told him all he needed. 

Squall was still as only the dead could so perfectly imitate still life. Eyes open, he banished all questions from his mind. Carefully, he constructed his next sentence in his mind before daring to present it. It had to be perfect. It had to be both a question—for Rinoa—and an answer, for the other voice. The other sorceress. "You let me become your knight when I asked you to," he rumbled, a strange mix of tenderness in his voice and defiance in his expression. "Why?"

"Because," Rinoa returned, her tone losing its edge, "you were _suffering, _Squall. Becoming my knight was a better alternative than being forced to be Ultimecia's."

"Maybe…but I doubt that's why you did it."

She blinked quizzically. "…I don't understand."

Solemnly, Squall became aware he was likely incurring the wrath of a terrible witch even as he spoke his piece. "Of course you do. No one understands what I'm talking about better than you do. You and I know what everyone else doesn't…what being a sorceress' knight means."

You promised! 

_I won't honor any promises to you. _"You know as well as I do," he went on, gesturing gently at Rinoa, a hint of sadness even in the motion, "just how _close_ we had to get. You know that it's not something you can just do with anyone. You know that when it comes down to it, everything about _this _bond…" He put a fist to his chest, capturing her in his gaze. "It's based on a kind of trust no one can understand. Do you remember?"

Rinoa, trembling, hugged herself, squinting at the grass. "…I remember."

"Then what happened?" he prompted, trying to keep the urgency out of his voice. "Something went wrong."

"You…" She sounded as if she were trying to swallow her heart. "You weren't the person I thought you were…you were completely different."

"Different…not like the Squall you knew. More like…the Squall that's talking to you now."

Rinoa stared at him, unable to speak.

_TRAITOR!_

Squall's eyes narrowed.

You will suffer the konsiquences! 

_You can't intimidate me, _he smoldered, unconsciously setting his jaw. An old, defiant fire rose inside him. _You don't know who you're dealing with anymore._

_You will suffer, _declared the voice matter-of-factly. _As will your sorceress brat._

            Squall's hands balled into fists. _I won't let you…_

There were no more answers. Rinoa was standing, staring, tortured by the course of the conversation. 

            Squall knelt where he was, then sank into a sitting position, his expression as dead and hollow as his sorceress'. "I'm sorry…" _That's what happened…somehow, _she_ convinced me. I agreed to stop talking to Rinoa in order to protect her and Simone. And now I've broken my promise. Which means… _He stared up at the ceiling, through the circular pane that allowed, seemed to invite the sun's blood to paint the songless aviary. 

…Ultimecia is coming. 

Rinoa collapsed. 

Instantly, Squall was by her side. Though he could not, dared not touch her, he leaned over her, shielding her from the evil light of the sky. Anguish rising in his throat, he fought the inclination to scream. _Not again!_

The crimson sky darkened to the dull red of drying blood. The mournful wail of battle sirens pierced the glass walls, shattering the peaceless silence. 


	5. Dogs of War

V

Dogs of War

--

_"Can you be forgiven?_

_What you see is all a dream_

_All I ask you is_

_'Are you still alive?'"_

_--_

            The world had not seen blue sky in three years. It turned on its axis with the relentless perseverance of a wounded soldier, covered in the red of its own gore, ignoring the aching weariness, the festering wounds, the feverish heat that surrounded it and devoured it from the inside. What little sunlight did breach its diseased atmosphere served only to intensify the burning, slowly cooking the planet in its own juices. It was an embattled world dying, writhing through orbit, trudging steadily toward its final destiny. Soon enough, the sun would fail to pierce the aggravated ozone, and the land and sea would gasp their final breaths. The failing light cast lengthening shadows across the blood-choked world. The deepest of the darkness fell upon Balamb Garden. 

            From the shadows came the wolves.

            They were creatures born of suffering and despair. Hairless, oily black flesh covered their gaunt forms, blood-red tongues lolling dryly between unnaturally sharp, chalk-white teeth. Ardent fury gleamed a pale violet within black, hollow expressions—sockets with no eyes but translucent, glassy bulbs. Sickle-shaped nails sprouted from powerful paws like hungry thorns. Cruel smiles yawned, products of nearly lipless mouths; the taut skin joined at a grotesquely askew angle just above the cheekbones as if someone had split the flesh with a razor.

            Demonic howls joined the chorus of battle sirens, tortured cries of joy signaling the hunt had begun. 

            **_-Find the sorceress child,-_**demanded the sexless voice of their master. **_-Bring her to me!-_**

One male wolf, alone in a corner, was larger than the others and a jewel among his brethren. His sleek coat of onyx black fur and a dark red crown of a mane melted flawlessly into the shade of a potted plant. He tilted his nose to the ceiling, seeking guidance from his god. The slick indigo sheen of his depthless eyes intensified with anticipation, but he was wise enough to be sure of his orders. _And the Sorceress herself?_

            **-_If you find her, kill her if you can. But Daedalus, do not waste time. All you encounter will resist you. Show no mercy.-_**

            Bowing his head in acquiescence, the wolf lord burst from the shadows of the hallway a moment later, startling two unfortunate teens—students, by their uniforms.

            There was no time to scream.

            He finished it quickly, knocking down the first student and tearing her throat out before she could utter so much as a startled cry. The second, a boy of the same age, attempted to pull him away from the dying girl, only to have his arms pass through the wolf as though it were not there. Daedalus twisted around at an impossible angle, snatching the boy's shoulder in very solid jaws and hurling him head-over-heels to the floor with the fluid skill of a seasoned wrestler. The boy managed a brief cry as the wolf's fangs tore loose of his flesh, a voice that was cut short when he hit the floor, breath knocked from his lungs. 

            Those fangs made certain no other sound would ever be uttered from that throat.

            The wolf lord moved on, padding down the dormitory hallways, a dark whisper of death. _Come forth, my brothers, _he sang, the telepathic call echoing silently throughout the Garden, _let the hunt begin! Be silent, strike quickly; accept no surrender!_

            The answer came to him not in words, but a pervading wail from no specific direction, and at once was everywhere, filling every hallway, room and courtyard. Dozens of voices rose to his charge, and from the shadows, spawned by the darkness, leapt his pack, his army.

            They appeared not in any one place, but anywhere shadows were numerable. As Daedalus galloped through the corridors, here and there a single wolf or a pair would join in behind him, and together, black souls rejoicing, the pack moved, tireless. They saw not a man-made construction around them, but shadows of forgotten forests, wraiths of snowdrifts and spectral crags they had once thought of as home. When they hunted, all was as it had been in those days of legend. They ran together, one mind, one spirit, one entity. 

            They ran together toward the central lobby of Balamb Garden. They left nothing living in their wake. 

  
* 

            Simon was growling. 

            He did not fear the strange, yet familiar spirit hovering over his fallen mistress. He had never feared Squall. He had been angry at the ghost for changing without reason, but that was all. Even when Rinoa had shown her forgiveness, he'd been reluctant to release his grudge so simply. Now, however, all that was irrelevant. 

            Squall was being a nuisance.Through Rinoa, Simon could sense the ghost's confusion, and the shepherd's ears pricked in alarm; if Squall did not stop thinking so _loudly _to himself, he would attract them. Simon could feel it; they were already here. 

            It was too late to help Rinoa. She was exhausted, more exhausted than she had let on. The turmoil Squall had put her through, and the shock of so much magic cascading down around her from the spell that had darkened the sky had been too much. It would be minutes yet before she would awake. 

Minutes, Simon knew, that could mean her death, if he did not protect her.

Without her, he was only a dog. But he was flesh and blood, and at least he could put that much between Rinoa and the shadowy abominations that stalked out of the shadows of the trees and underbrush. 

The first hairless, grinning wolf rocketed from a patch of shrubs and lunged at the inert sorceress, wasting no time in its intent to kill. Simon reacted with lightning swiftness, with a running start, sprang over Rinoa and planted himself firmly between her and the fiend. Caught by surprise, the shadow wolf brought up fast, confused by Simon's sudden appearance and uncertain what to make of it. 

Simon snarled and snapped at the wolf, making every attempt to convince it he was fully capable of doing it serious harm. For a moment, the creature seemed to buy the act. Then its friends arrived. 

Four more wolves, all silent as the shadows that birthed them, stepped onto the cobbled path. Simon knew then his life was over, but he'd be damned before he'd go down without a fight. Strafing to his right, away from Rinoa, he snapped at the lead wolf, drawing the pack's attention. He heard the mournful howling begin in the distance, a signal to all the wolves infiltrating the Garden that the time for battle had come. These wolves joined the terrible song, their heads thrown back in unholy oneness, not fearing any vulnerability, for they had none. Even Simon knew they could only be harmed when caught by surprise, when an attack was unexpected and a wolf forgot its unity with its pack. Only magic had any effect on them in groups, and even then they were resistant to it. They always attacked in groups. 

The lead wolf finished his song. His pack fell silent. They all stared at Simon with empty, soulless eyes. 

Once more, they howled, but this time, it was _at _Simon. 

Simon braced himself, preparing for what he knew would come next. The air around him seemed to thicken to a palpable goo, making breathing a strenuous labor. Space became heavier; he sensed himself being pulled inexorably toward the ground. Spots began to obscure the edges of his vision. He felt slightly dizzy. Still, he stood his ground, prepared to fight to the death in three times normal gravity. 

One by one, his enemies—the humans called them demiwolves—attacked.

He met the charge of the first wolf, successfully grappling with it, keeping its razor-sharp teeth away from his throat. They landed instead in his shoulder. He did not yelp. To do so would show weakness, and the demiwolves fought harder when they sensed weakness. Twisting to try and avoid the jaws of two other dogs, he wrestled with the first, trying to push it to the ground so he could use the leverage to pull his shoulder free of its fangs. He ignored the remaining two wolves, which stood aside and continued the gravity-intensifying wail. 

He countered the immortal wolves' mad rage with his own focused fervor. He maneuvered his main adversary to the ground, yanked his shoulder free, and spun, snapping, snarling like a demon himself, fighting to appear unaffected by the warped space around him while trying simultaneously to back out of the howling wolves' short range of influence. Get away from the heaviness. Lead the bad dogs away from Rinoa. That was all he thought. 

The three demiwolves pounced on him again. He was unlucky; one of them bit his right back paw. He went down under a chaos of darkness and bloody fangs. His muzzle hit the ground three times harder than it should have, dazing him. He was vaguely aware of a throbbing pain in one tooth, but that was overwhelmed by the rending agony of three sets of fangs tearing greedily into his flesh. 

A rush of hot wind wafted past him, singeing his fur, followed by an explosive force that nearly blew him back onto his feet. A blinding light, like the sun before the sky was red, forced him to close his eyes. The gravity field dropped. He was light as a feather. The demiwolves had momentarily scattered. His vision cleared. Stumbling only once, he got to his feet, holding his injured paw off the ground. He faced a semicircle of growling demiwolves. One of them was barely alive, half of its face burned away, the remnants of its left arm dangling uselessly at its side. Horribly, the beast continued to stand up, fleshless gums baring blackened fangs. 

But the wolves no longer appeared at all interested in Simon. They were staring somewhere behind him, above him. 

Simon crooked an ear at the sound of footfalls at his side. They were not Rinoa's light, airy steps, but softer, heavier. He was surprised to note they did not echo in the dome-shaped aviary.

Squall stepped in front of him. The demiwolves as one backed up. One whimpered and was instantly slaughtered by its packmate. The dead wolf faded away, melting into the ground until it was only a shadow. Like an ugly bruise, the shadow faded to purple, then green, and then was gone completely. 

Four demiwolves remained, and they faced the silently advancing ghost as he were an angry mountain lion, not giving any ground, but unsure of their power to take any back. 

If they were hoping for a standoff, or to intimidate him into retreat, they were disappointed. 

  
* 

Squall had never liked paramagic much. He was good at using it, but if he could kill his enemy with a gunblade and his own strength and skill, he would save his magic for more practical uses, like protecting himself against it. 

Now he was thanking himself for conserving so much of it, and thanking the cloud for allowing him to retain his remembered stock through the transition into this haunted world. Watching Simon fight the demonic wolves, Squall had tried to help, figuring the worst that could happen was his magic wouldn't work at all. 

Not only had the flare spell worked, it had apparently granted the shadowy creatures the ability to see him; an unexpected plus he might use to lure them away from Rinoa if he could not destroy them. Whatever they were, they'd proved impervious to Simon's teeth, which had seemed to pass through them without harming them. 

Squall did not assume he himself was safe from them, ghost or no ghost. He too had been chilled by their howls, and there was a sense of unholy power about them, as if they were undead…or somehow worse, if it was possible. Something told him they were not, and so he decided not to try any life-giving magic on them in case it did them more help than harm. Instead he went with what he'd already proven to work; light and fire. 

He hurled another flare at the first dog to attack him. This wolf caught the explosive spell squarely in the chest; the ensuing crest of piercing light and consuming heat neatly vaporized the wailing animal. 

The remaining three wolves rushed past him, and with a curse Squall realized the first attack had been a distraction. He whirled to find the wounded Simon standing protectively over Rinoa's unconscious form, facing three fast-approaching adversaries. _They're making a suicide run,_ Squall realized as he prepared and threw another flare. _They'll kill Rinoa if it means they have to die to do it. _

He was able to destroy two wolves before the last one—the one with the burned face—reached its destination, barreling forward despite its limp. Simon met the beast head-to-head, and to Squall's astonishment the wolf was forced back; suddenly, Simon's teeth were finding purchase. The two powerful dogs, both crippled from their wounds, scuffled in the dirt. Finally, an agonized yelp pierced the air.

Simon, torn, bleeding and minus his top-right canine, stood over the dead and quickly fading demiwolf. There was no blood on his muzzle that was not his own. The shadow beast, its neck broken, was gone in seconds.

Just long enough to cast one last, spiteful spell. 

A nearby fir tree shivered as a thin arch of electricity jumped from the ceiling light fixtures and struck the dry branches. Sparks fell from the impact point, smoldering needles trailing smoke as they tumbled to the ground. The parched air fed newborn flames that quickly consumed the top of the tree. Falling branches ignited nearby ferns and dry ground nettle.

Squall tried to throw a water spell, only to find he had nothing to target. It was as though the fire was not there. Confused, he tried again, again with no results. 

Frustrated, the fire spreading with frightful rapidity, he tried to think of a way to move Rinoa that did not require touching her. Though he'd been relieved to realize her collapse had been a result of exhaustion rather than any direct influence on Ultimecia's part, the effect was the same. At the rate the fire was growing, if the heat did not kill her soon, the smoke would. She was still senseless. There was no hope of waking her up in the next five minutes.

He heard a scraping sound and turned, fearing another regiment of dark wolves. That would be just his luck. But to his surprise (and slight embarrassment), while he'd been busy worrying, Simon had taken the liberty of grabbing Rinoa's collar in his teeth and was now dragging her toward the door. Having the use of only three out of four paws made the task exceptionally difficult, but Simon did not give up. Squall again attempted magic—first to try and heal Simon, then, when that did not work, to float Rinoa and ease the dog's burden. But as with the tree, neither spell had any effect. Puzzling and frustrating as it was, Squall could do nothing but stay with them and watch as the flames and smoke began to fill the glass enclosure. A window shattered somewhere, allowing at least some of the smoke to filter out and giving a vent for the flames to follow that was, thankfully, not in Rinoa's direction. But the time it bought was minimal. Squall was forced to content himself with making sure no other shadow wolves appeared to hinder Simon's slow progress toward the exit. 

The smoke was soon so thick, Squall was hard-pressed to see anything at all, much less watch out for any marauding demons. He did not need to breathe, nor could he smell the smoke, but he was nevertheless overcome by a phantom urge to cough. At first he passed off the sensation as a psychological response to the sight of so much smoke, but it did not take long for him to realize that it was not he himself, but Rinoa who was having trouble breathing. She was still unconscious, but her body was already straining for adequate oxygen. 

Simon's back bumped against something. Squall saw flames not ten feet away. His eyes widened as the dog nudged open the glass door.

Flames rushed forward to consume the sudden flow of fresh air. With a final epic heave, Simon yanked Rinoa through the door and free of the fire.

Squall could do nothing but follow them out into the open. Simon, his strength waning, dragged Rinoa a few dozen more feet and finally released her. Stained black with soot, panting and wheezing from smoke inhalation, he laid protectively across her inert form and began to bark hoarsely, over and over again, a peculiar, plaintive note to the sound. 

_Calling for help, _Squall realized, a suspicion that was confirmed a moment later as five armed SeeDs came running, some looking as though they'd already seen a few battles in the past few moments. 

With a flurry of efficient single-word commands and silent signals, the SeeDs carefully lifted Rinoa—and then Simon—and carried both the unconscious sorceress and her dog toward the Garden's central dome, signaling all along the way for other SeeDs to tend to the flaming aviary they left behind.

Having nowhere better to go and no inclination to leave Rinoa's side, Squall followed them all the way to the infirmary.

  
* 

Commander Dane had been about to take his leave of the bridge under the pretense of using the facilities when the sky had darkened. The thought of checking on Rinoa—incognito, of course—left his mind, or at least stepped aside to allow more pressing matters to barge through to the front. Thankfully, his subordinates were either too preoccupied with the sudden crisis to remember his alleged business with the men's room, or they were kind enough not to question him about his supreme bladder control under fire. 

Nida, on the other hand, felt quite ready to piss in his pants.

_So this is how it all sums up, _he thought through his internal panic as other bridge officers shouted warnings and epithets. _It's the beginning of the end of the world, and I'm the pilot of a floating military school. Am I the only person who sees the sick humor in this whole situation? _He heaved back on the rudder with a practiced arm, strong enough to drag the Garden to a short stop, but not so sharply as to throw every last person standing off their feet. 

"Incoming!" Ary cried, turning and pointing to a multitude of dots gaining form on the aft horizon.

"Creepdrakes," warned the relief tactical officer, trying unsuccessfully to keep her voice from shaking.

"Come about!" ordered the commander. 

"I should've been a quantum physicist," muttered Nida. He eyed the fast-approaching creepdrakes with contempt, obeyed Dane's orders with a calm deftness so genuine, he almost convinced himself he wasn't scared out of his mind. _At least then I'd _think _I understood why everything goes to hell, and even if I didn't, I'd be too crazy to care. Anyone who messes with time is crazy, right?_

The war sirens began to wail. Nida was finally unable to ignore the traffic jam of sheer and utter _panic _he'd been trying to keep at bay. Complacently wheeling the Garden about to face the oncoming air invasion, he firmly closed his lips around his clenched teeth. _This is it, we're toast, look at allthosebastardshowCOULD it get any worse!_

Of course, as always happened when Nida made the mistake of asking himself that question, things got worse. Much worse. 

"Commander," announced the relief tactical, "word from the infirmary—no, the training cent—the quad…sir, _demiwolves!_ They're everywhere!"

Even Nida's eyebrows raised at that one. The demiwolves only appeared when Ultimecia was very near. He dared a fearful glance over his shoulder. 

The commander's face was grim. "Ary," he hailed, "turn on the lights. All of them."

"If I do that, we can't use the burn cannons—"

"_Do it! _Every last one. I want the Garden shining like a star."

Ary did not argue.

Nida stared bleakly at the nearing creepdrakes. It was a huge flight, larger than any he'd seen. He wondered if the Garden was ready to take them on. He wondered if _he _was ready. _Yep, definitely should've been a soccer coach._

Commander Dane had the intercom. "Attention. This is Dane. Battle imminent! To your stations! All junior trainees, report to classrooms six and seven. A-squads alert, incoming enemy! Scramble! Scramble…"

*

Garden's response to the attack was instantaneous, efficient, and deadly.

            The SeeDs and demiwolves were no strangers to one another. They had fought for long years, and they knew each others' weaknesses like old rivals. The scores of demon dogs overrunning the hallways and springing from shadowed corners attacked everything in their path with lethal fervor. For a few moments following their surprise appearance, they appeared to be unstoppable apparitions.

            The whole of Garden knew better, and it was only a few moments the demiwolves retained the illusion of omnipotence. The SeeDs did not waste time on weapons. No wounds of the flesh would hurt or hinder the abyssal warriors of Ultimecia's dark legion.

            The aura and flash of magic showered every embattled room and hallway, clawing at shadows both mundane and supernatural. Demiwolves howled their battle cries and wailed their pains. The SeeD caught isolated from his fellows was instantly set upon from all sides; the wolf who found himself cornered was just as powerless. Either side took casualties, but the dead demiwolves did not bleed or leave behind bodies to discourage their comrades. Their enraptured souls returned to the servitude from whence they came; they were Ultimecia's flock, black sheep in wolf's clothing.

            He was their shepherd. 

            He hung low in the red murk that obscured the sun. Anyone looking up from below would see him as nothing more than a roving spot of ghostly luminescence in the clouds, like the pale reflection of a searchlight.

            He scoured the Garden as diligently for a target, taking little notice of the insects of SeeD and demiwolf alike that scurried and clashed in plain sight of his deadly powers. He did not waste those powers smiting insignificant pests one by one. His instructions were contrary to such overzealous use of energy, and the location of his prey was far more important to him than a few random SeeDs. He had only three targets. Daedalus was busy taking care of one, possibly two of them now.

            This was the first of the final assaults. It would be both telling and intriguing to see how it played out. No doubt, Garden would fight back this first wave, but that had been planned for, and how many lives would suffer for it? He decided his respect for his enemy would be gauged by how long it took them to fall into despair. If they fought to the last, he would be most impressed. Most impressed indeed. He hoped they would. There was no greater pleasure than that of watching the mouse struggle in the trap until its inevitable, final throes. SeeD had proven to be quite a challenging rat.

            As he'd predicted, upon the creepdrakes' approach, hatches opened on either side of the besieged Garden. One at a time, streaks of pure white metal—bloodied blades in the gory sunlight—rocketed from the open bays. Like a swarm of angry hornets, they came about, bristling with the light of charging weapons, the lone reminders of Esthar's dead glory.

            The watcher in the clouds felt his spirit swell as he remembered that wondrous victory. Esthar's technology, so modeled after that of the ancient Centra, made the country mighty; but the souls of its residents were weak. The war Ultimecia had waged against them had been a battle of hearts and minds, a battleground upon which weapons of material power were useless. Notwithstanding their attempts to bring her down with fire and force, his mistress had turned their strength against them. She did not break Esthar's military defense; she did not even try. 

She didn't need to. She broke the people, instead.

Her magic had twisted madness into the sturdiest of Estharian souls. Nightmares and delusions claimed the city, and within days of Ultimecia's psychological assault, Esthar had crumbled. She broke their minds, broke their hearts, and at last, their spirits as well. Without wills to guide their weapons, they were harmless. 

It was their own weapons which had obliterated the nation of Esthar.

Ultimecia claimed the fallen capital as her own. Only the souls of the dead resided there, now, and they were hers to command and manipulate, an army of despair that grew stronger by the day. Though these spectral legions were useless as weapons in her crusade against the living, for disembodied spirits had no influence over the living world, they served their purpose just as well, fueling her power with their ethereal energies. Now the time had come for her to eradicate the last blade of resistance raised against her. Of the world's remaining nations, Galbadia was the last to fall. SeeD was the last army to contend with. Balamb Garden was all that remained of SeeD.

            So he swung lazily on wings of pale blue energy, watching, waiting. Below him began the opening number in a final dance with death. The dozens of fleet little fighters spawned from Balamb Garden's belly assumed formations and raced to meet the arrival of the creepdrakes. The cackling horde of shadowy, draconic forms shifted, and like a school of demonic piranhas converged on the leading formation of shining silver. 

            But even as the watcher felt satisfaction at seeing the first of the Garden's Air Defense Force fall from the sky, something gave him pause, something he would not have expected would give him pause. It was just a cloud on the horizon, dark and forbidding as any thunderhead. However, it was out of place, and this bothered him. He was a master of weather, could control any formation in the sky, and for a cloud—any cloud—to be out of place, it must be a danger somehow. He sternly commanded the wayward cloud to dissipate. It refused. Or, more accurately, it utterly ignored him. His powers had no effect on the strange, distant mist. It was as if the cloud did not exist at all. 

            Pondering this enigma, he decided to take the matter to his mistress. When his knowledge failed him, her word was his ultimatum.

            Invisible eyes closing to the unfolding mayhem below, the watcher returned to the void from whence he'd come, home to his only better, his only love. In parting, he called on one of his subordinates to take his place.

*

Squall braced himself as the Garden rocked from what might have been an impact, and twisted halfway around to stare out the infirmary window as something large rushed past. He didn't get a good look at it, though it might have been black, and he thought his eyes picked up the trailing end of a reptilian tail. 

            He did not ask himself what was going on. He'd been in the middle of a melee too often to be confused by the chaos of war. 

            The infirmary was so busy with medic crew, Squall was finding it difficult to tell which, if any of them, were in charge. He hadn't seen anyone resembling Dr. Kadowaki—in fact, he had not even looked for her, assuming that she, like most everyone he knew, was absent from this Garden.

He gave the infirmary one more cursory glance-over, taking note of who and what was where and why. Simon had been taken into a back room out of sight—and out of the way, Squall imagined—and Rinoa placed on one of many cots that lined the walls of a room that was quickly filling with injured soldiers. Her ailments were minor in comparison to many unfortunate patients; some were dragged in missing limbs, others had to be carried by their fellows because their bones had been crushed by a combination of demiwolf jaws and gravitational magic. The entrance to the infirmary was quickly developing a welcome mat of blood, as more victims were ushered along an identical path of pain to the waiting repository of flat beds and IV lines.

The medical crew was many times that of the Garden Squall had known, and the infirmary itself had been expanded; no longer a simple clinic designed for the likes of mild concussions, broken bones and sprained wrists, this was a well-oiled medical facility, complete with operation and recovery rooms. The Quad had been annexed to allow for more space; the infirmary was now large enough to handle dozens of patients.

It was becoming increasingly apparent to Squall that despite the apparent lack of change in décor, the similarities between the Garden he'd once known and the one he knew now were superficial at best. Balamb Garden of his memories (dreams? He wasn't certain anymore) was a fairly well-run military school campus that also served as a "base" for SeeD. 

            This incarnation had ceased to be a paradise and was now a refuge, a fortress under attack. When the war sirens had sounded, it had erupted in an organized chaos of activity like a disturbed ant nest. SeeDs and cadets alike rushed about their duties with the practiced, even hands of battle-hardened veterans. Everyone, young and old, had a job, a purpose when war was upon them. There were no students in this predatory citadel, only soldiers. 

This Garden nurtured no pansies. Its flowers had fangs. 

Squall would have liked to be one of them now. He was used to assessing a situation, deciding on a course of action, and then executing whatever directive he deemed necessary for the circumstance. It was a requirement that all SeeDs be able to think and act quickly in a crisis. The problem with this crisis was that he was an agent of it, the catalyst, if not the cause. He knew how to conduct himself to implement a solution. He had no idea what to do now that he was part of the problem. 

So he did nothing at all. He just watched. He hated every second of it.       

Aware of the bustle and sense of urgency surrounding him, but unable to affect any physically tangible object, Squall had plenty of opportunity to _think, _but no way to _act._ Again and again, he thought of what he might do had he believed his presence made an ounce of difference to the world. Again and again, he was stopped from taking any action by the fact it would make no difference at all. Over and over, the reality of his own _ineffectuality _washed over him, dealt him blow after blow until he felt certain he would crumple under the battering. He crouched by the slim platform of a bed Rinoa now occupied, not because he thought doing so would bring him any closer to her but because he simply hadn't the will to stand.

            _This is hell, _he thought angrily to himself as the floor bucked again. His unseen scowl tried, once again ineffectually, to penetrate the mind of the unconscious sorceress on the bed. For the first time he could remember, he didn't see Rinoa when he looked at her. He looked beyond her, as through an empty glass, seeing only fractured images and twisted memories through the opaque lens of her spirit. 

He didn't know her. He didn't know _how _to know her anymore. Like this world, she was too far away, out of reach there on the table before him. 

He shuddered, clutching his forehead in one tormented hand. _This is what it means to feel hopeless. Always there, but not really, a world where no one believes in you, you want to cry out but you don't, what _difference _does it make shouting if no one can hear your voice! _His hand balled to a fist, he wavered slightly, as if dizzy or weak, caught himself on the edge of the bed that held the Rinoa he didn't know. _I can't take this…_ His mental dialogue trailed off, strangled by a new and cruel realization: _I couldn't take this. I folded when I was faced with these odds. Without her, without hope…I broke. _This _is what drove me insane! _

_This has _already _happened!_

Shaking, oblivious to everything but the overwhelming sensation in his dead heart that was not quite pain and not quite peace, just a cold, numb disquiet, Squall barely took note of the howls coming from somewhere nearby, beyond the infirmary walls.

_And it's going to happen again…it will if I don't…_

Do something. Do anything. But what could he _do _that would have any meaning in a world where he did not even exist?

The floor shuddered again, derailing his train of thought. This time the tremor was a familiar one, followed by the peculiar lifting sensation beneath his feet as the Garden raised itself out of the surf and over dry land. Beleaguered though they were, they had arrived at the Galbadian continent. Squall shot a glance out the window again, more to get his bearings than out of any care for the scene it framed. 

He froze, unexpectedly transfixed. Flashbacks of a certain painting from Ultimecia's gallery flickered in his mind's eye, unwanted, but unavoidable. Numbly, Squall thought he could even recall the painting's name.

_Ignus…_

The archaic word for _fire. _

Outside, fire flashed in a red sky, strange craft Squall had never seen before—though they looked Estharian in construct—buzzed through the smoky air, chasing demonic shadows, like the silhouettes of dragons, living nightmares of some Ultimecian design. A ball of orange flame hung low, choking on the bloody atmosphere. But it was the ground below that drew his attention, and a mound of dusty earth that was growing in size as the Garden passed it. From this distance, it was hard to tell the size of the hill, but it had to be decently large to be so clearly visible.

Like a cancerous tumor, the mound swelled, and the earth around it began to crack. From the wounds bled _fire._

A tortured, ear-piercing scream rattled the walls. So loud was the terrible noise that it was impossible to say from where it had originated. It hardly mattered; the chaos that followed in the wake of that scream was far more substantial than the scream itself.

Incorporeal though he was, even Squall blanched at the violent eruption of _fire _that burst from the sore of the earth, reflexively raising his arm to shield his face from the blazing debris that flew from the exploded fissure toward the passing Garden. Only a few small pieces struck the Garden's steel hide, the impacts ringing metallic and menacing. Molten fragments bounced harmlessly off the armored windows, but a few then fell to the yards and balconies of the lower levels—upon who or what, Squall did not care to imagine. Even if he had, he would not have been able to. He was too busy staring at the creature that had emerged from the flaming fissure. Below, a small volcano oozed the planet's fiery ichor, spitting flame and sulfur and ash, burning the already scarred and lifeless ground. From the lava floes emerged a huge, serpentine form, molten flesh black and cracked and glowing magma-red from within. Hot-coal eyes blazing with ardent rage, the bitter nightmare of a beast writhed and shrieked in mad, burning fury. 

Squall's eyes narrowed. _I should have known…_

            It had been a passing curiosity he'd filed away for later, a question he'd planned to ask Rinoa at the earliest opportunity, then promptly forgotten. It had seemed important, but less so at the time than trying to patch relations with his sorceress. What had happened to the Guardian Forces? Now he knew. And, he thought resignedly, he should have seen it coming.

            Rising up out of the flames, spreading charred, tattered wings to the red sky, was the twisted phantom of what once had been Leviathan.

*

            Daedalus urged his army forward, through the painful glare of Garden's cheery lighting, toward the upper levels. He'd hounded the sorceress child's scent and followed it to this hallway. 

They'd swept through the Garden's main floor like liquid, a black wave that frothed red. Nothing had challenged the dark tide of demon dogs and survived. Smaller packs harried the enemy throughout the Garden, distracting and confusing, that Daedalus might encounter less resistance on his hunt. Twenty wolves at his back, he paused on the landing just below level two, tipped his nose to the air and breathed.

            A large, hairless brute of a demiwolf padded to his side. Bloody tongue lolling, the creature's violet eyes glinted with wicked curiosity. _Savoring the smell of fear, Leader?_

            Daedalus snarled and met his subordinate's question with a token snap of his fangs. _Fool. I would not postpone Her mandate for my own pleasures. The enemy is near. Haven't you noticed these stairs are strangely empty? They know we are coming. They are ready to meet us._

Chastened, the lesser wolf lowered his head in submission to the Alpha. _The light is bright, and the shadows few and pale. If they have a plan, we would be at a disadvantage. _

            Daedalus flattened his black ears, but said nothing. 

            _I could go, and find another way, while you wait, _the hairless wolf offered.

_            No! _Daedalus denied with a curl of his black lips._ Only together are we many, _he asserted, holding his head higher as he repeated a sacred mantra._ The wolf who fights alone is few, and the few are weak. It is the destiny of the weak to die. We will fight as one, and together, we shall not falter. _

            As if in answer to the hymn, an earsplitting shriek cut the air. The restless wolves shuffled and whined, laying their ears back. A sharp order of silence from Daedalus forbade any of them to howl at the acute noise. 

            _The firesnake rises! _Exclaimed the big demiwolf by his side. _What now, Daedalus?_

Undisturbed, the Alpha wolf settled calmly on his haunches. When the scream had faded away into echoes, he turned a glowing stare on his bald and grinning counterpart. 

_We wait, _he said.

*

            Through boiling air warped with heat and violence, the firesnake rose like a hungry flame while the sun took refuge behind a wounded and distant horizon. He was the brightest thing in the sky, glowing amber and red. His flesh, black as tar shot through with lava veins, snapped and popped, spitting tiny flares and spraying clouds of embers and ashes with every twitch of his serpentine body. The dry-kindling sound of his bones grinding against each other echoed through the brackish skies. His tormented, hissing screams joined the hellish chorus of war and death. He coiled angry patterns in his own fire, the misbegotten child of misery and Ultimecia's magic.

            He had no memory of what or who he had been before this life of sundering agony and burning hatred. He knew only that venting his rage upon the enemy brought momentary relief from the pain of his ever-cracking dry bones and offered some solace from the unquenchable anger. Floating mid-air in the twilight heat, he targeted the huge and comparatively cumbersome Garden only a few hundred meters away. He snorted a yellow cloud of sulfur. He was not allowed to incinerate the cold, ugly metal construction, at least not yet. _Wreak havoc, _was the edict from his master, _but do not destroy. _

The fleet of fighter ships, responding to the danger of his abrupt appearance, abandoned their war with the creepdrakes in favor of him, dozens of the swift craft converging on his position with weapons blazing. 

            His narrow eyes flared white hot as he felt his power build. The ground far below began to sink, a cauldron heralding another imminent eruption. Jagged beak gaping in a ragged hiss, he  snaked slowly upward in preparation, a vertical wave rising on the thermals, stopping to hover level with the retreating Garden's upper floors. Once-graceful fins, now blackened and tattered, spread like skeletal wings. The serpent twisted his body into a fiery ampersand.  
            He hardly felt the hundreds of energy blasts that cascaded over his face and wings. The energy was cool to him, like rain. Moments before, the shots might have startled him, forced him to deal with the pesky ships before he could concentrate on focusing his power. Their efforts came just a little too late; he was already charging, the growing thermal energy shining through the canopy of his cracked scales like the rays of a cursed sun.

            Even the Garden's bold fleet was mindful enough to pull out of their attack when Geoleviathan threw his head forward and screamed.

            The ground shifted, rippled and roared as a fault line broke, stone crashing against stone. The collision pushed up the dry rock, and a small crag of blasted earth rocketed skyward, dripping lava and scattering ash. The tip of the peak stopped just below the burning serpent, who screamed again. At his command, the ground at the base of the crag split, spitting fire and magma.

            One more scream, and the blood of the earth spilled out, as if an artery had been cut.

            Reveling in his power, the twisted Guardian guided the flow. He spread his smoldering wings to the sky; the rushing lava left the ground. Wings of liquid fire unfurled, rising like a tidal wave out of a molten surf. They crashed against the stern of Balamb Garden with as much ferocity and rushed under the golden halo to cook the air beneath, poisoning it with sulfur.

            Garden shuddered visibly and listed to one side; the floe had targeted the rudder and engines. Viscous lava oozed down the hull, leaving behind glowing, melting trails, or cooled and fell away, taking scraps of weakened metal with it. Clouds of unbreathable gas rolled over the lower levels, strangling the exposed yards and balconies. The Garden leaned a little further to the side as the aerial battle between the SeeD fighters and creepdrakes resumed around it with renewed intensity. 

            His attack spent, the serpent paused, heavy breaths yellow with sulfur, smoke and dust cascading from his parched throat. The Garden had stopped its retreat and now appeared crippled, and he was overheating. It was the one vice of his inexhaustible power; if he expended too much energy at a time, he would meltdown, and destroy himself. 

            The fighters seized the opportunity to strike at him. Once again breaking off the battle with the creepdrakes, they flocked en mass to the resting Guardian, though the enemy was not far behind, the more immediate concern of preventing the monster from recuperating pushing the lesser threat onto the back burner—which wasn't much cooler. The limping Garden was by no means defeated. Though one of its three engines smoked and a small portion of its golden circlet was damaged and blackened, it had not ceased fire upon the flitting creepdrakes, and with its allied fighters out of the way, there was no confusion to stay a well-trained gunner or arcane hand. Magic and fire from turrets of Estharian make trained on the retreating shadows and let fly with merciless abandon, felling dozens of the creatures in one pass. Noting their tactical mistake, the creepdrakes broke off their pursuit of the fighters and focused again on the Garden, leaving Geoleviathan to deal with the silver, blue and violet-hued gnats. 

            The Guardian hissed menacingly at the approaching danger and stabbed his glowing beak at the first ship to reach him, swatting at another with his molten tail. He considered retiring from the melee, burying himself in the ground until he had the opportunity to cool…

            _No! _

            A sharp voice in his mind and a shank of pain in his brain made him tremble, banishing all thoughts of escape or surrender. No, he would simply have to pace himself, he supposed, avoid the little annoyances until he had a chance to use his power again, until he could breathe. In any case, remaining still would not do him any good. He had to move.

             With a screech of defiance at the flashing, flitting, stinging blue and violet lights dancing about him—just out of reach out in the absolute darkness beyond the glow of his body—the serpent slithered away from their fire, quickly picking up speed. The comparatively cold night air against his charred flesh bit him with its chill, but it served to cool his core. Shrieking at the ships and stabbing at them with his sword-like beak, he danced around and through them like water between shore rocks, striking some like the tide, slipping between others like sand. All the while, he edged away from the Garden, hoping they might think he'd forgotten about it, hoping they would forget he wasn't alone…

            When he'd reached the shore, he vanished in an explosion of vapor beneath the red surf, and in a few freezing, torturous moments, emerged again, black as night and prepared for his next assault. 

*

            Garden, having just managed to right itself again, was ill-prepared for the massive projectile of molten flame that struck, once again, from behind. The vengeful meteor was hurled from the black sky of the ocean.

            They were lucky; the aim was off, and the blow was a glancing one, but Commander Dane held fast to the back of Ary's chair as the bridge rocked violently with the impact. A low roar, like the grinding of giant, rusted gears, prompted him to turn and stare at the wall behind him, as if he could see through it to examine the damage to the floating campus.

            "Idiots," he muttered, meaning the strike fleet.

            "Aft generator is out," Ary reported mechanically.

            "Well, crap," Nida exclaimed over his shoulder. "Ary, doesn't that one power the dorms?"

"And the primary school and the daycare rooms, that's right."

"Good _night_," said Nida, in earnest.

            Dane shot a frown at Ary. "Daycare?" His mind raced. _Simone…_ "Contact the flight squad captains," he ordered after a brief, stricken silence, and continued to speak, his words coming faster, his voice getting louder with the urgency of his commands. "Bring half of them home to the creeps, and tell them to stay on task this time! Tell the other half to keep that snake busy, buy us some time if nothing else. And get that power rerouted. Nida, take the mic. Divert all odd-numbered SeeDs to level 2 and call Sheena to replace me. It's her call on the squadrons once she gets here. I'm going down to the daycare; I can be more help out there than I can in here. _Do it!_" He snapped when Ary turned to protest this last announcement. 

            Confident his words had been heard and trusting the bridge crew to carry out his orders regardless of their own opinions on the issue, Commander Dane took the lift down, leaping the last six feet before it had reached the floor, and rushed across the room, almost cracking his elbows against elevator doors that wouldn't open fast enough. Once inside, he mashed the "2" button, muttering impatiently as the elevator seemed to crawl down its shaft.

            The Garden shook as if something huge had impacted it. The elevator swayed, thudding against the sides of the shaft, throwing Dane to the floor. Metal groaned. A warning light flashed on the control panel. Something large cracked against the bottom of the car. The lights winked out, and the elevator shrieked to a halt. 

            Swearing savagely, Dane pushed himself to his knees and shook his head, trying to throw off his disorientation as the emergency lights clicked on, flooding the car with a weak orange glow. 

            He raised his head to gaze into a pair of cold, colorless eyes. 

            **_-Hello, Commander Dane,- _**greeted a resonant voice that seemed to come from all around. **_-We meet again. I have been sent to deliver a message to Garden.-_**

            *

            The battle with the thing-that-had-been-Leviathan was lost to Squall's eyes, but he could hear the shrieks and watched the people in the increasingly crowded infirmary thrown hither-thither as the Garden suffered the brunt of the creature's assaults. Some thoughtful medic stood by Rinoa's bedside, keeping her from falling, but Squall was too enraptured to feel any gratitude for the fellow's help. He leaned against the shaking wall, his knees bent, arms pressed flat against a surface he could not feel. Head tilted slightly back, he watched impassively as the world spun obliviously around him. 

            His eyes, half-open and glazed, strayed to Rinoa. Over and over, he beat on the doors of her mind, begging her to open up, to acknowledge him. He received no answer but silence. She either could not hear him, or would not respond. But he kept trying, mechanically, holding no hope but giving no ground, dead and yet dying still, his soul withering a little more every time he cried out to be heard and the resounding silence in his heart insisted: Nobody's home. 

            Sitting there, watching her, ignorant of the chaos surrounding him, he might have been content to let his resolve bleed away until he was hollow, let the torment leak out with his soul until there was no pain left to feel. But he did not let it go. He held onto the anguish, held onto the hell of his nonexistence. He coveted it now, for he knew that escaping the torment by giving into the numbness would only force on him a worse fate. It was the only torture he could think of that would surpass the pain of his ineffectuality. He'd known the truth of it the moment his hand had passed through Rinoa without touching her, without feeling, and she'd driven that truth home with the declaration that he could never, ever touch her or anyone else that way again. 

            The only thing worse than this suffering was not being able to suffer, or feel anything at all. Not being able to hurt, or bleed, or die, and _wanting _to. Emotionless, and _conscious _of the fact. That was what happened to the other Squall. He'd sacrificed everything—even his soul—to save Rinoa and Simone. He was no longer capable of caring because he was truly dead inside.

            _I'm not dead, _this Squall repeated to himself, closing his eyes as the sound of a nearby explosion thundered through the walls. _I'm still alive, and I don't want to give up everything. Not for Rinoa, not for Simone, or anyone else. Once you sacrifice it all, you have nothing left to surrender. You're useless. You're dead. I'm not dead. I'm still alive…still alive…still here, no matter what anyone else thinks. I'm still here. I'm not dead. I'm not dead!_

            A loud bang echoed through the room. Something fell and shattered on the floor. Someone shouted. 

_'I'll stay right here.'_

There was a scream. 

            _I'm not dead._

            An alien voice, a grunt, like a dog sneezing.

            _Not dead yet._

"The sorceress! They're going for the sorceress!"

            _Not yet._

            "Someone protect Rinoa!"

        _Now!_

            Blue eyes snapped open. At first they saw only darkness, but then the darkness moved, revealing it had shape and substance, and a wicked canine face turned to sneer fangedly, the cruel violet gaze widening in a sickeningly human expression of surprise. 

            _Die!_

            As if obeying Squall's command of its own volition, the demiwolf who had been ready to leap upon Rinoa's unconscious form and render the cot her deathbed, itself fell to the floor and died, struck down by a death spell. 

            Squall stood up, slowly. He narrowed cold eyes on the remaining trio of demiwolves forcing their way through the medics. The horrified SeeD personnel could do nothing to stop the creatures without risking collateral damage; any spell they possessed strong enough to take out a demiwolf could potentially kill a nearby patient as well, so packed was the infirmary with wounded. 

            Squall smirked cruelly. _They _could do _nothing._ They were irrelevant. _Ineffectual._

            _Not me._

            He walked out into the narrow hall between the rows of beds. Stepping over the dead body of the helpful medic as if he could have tripped over it, he turned to face the wolves, raising his left hand to touch his brow with the tips of his fingers. The demiwolves saw him, and for a moment, they paused, each studying his strangely fearless expression with unease. 

            Staring back at them with the concentrated look of one who is simply doing his job, Squall contemplated what would be the quickest, easiest way to dispatch the things. Apparently he was the only one in the room with the forbidden magic of Death. The options he toyed with now were practical, tactical ones; he hadn't much left of the spell. He could risk attempting to target all three at once, or try to hit them each individually. If even one spell failed, if even one of the dogs got past him, he wasn't certain he'd be fast enough to keep it from reaching Rinoa. 

            In the split moments he had to decide, he turned the question over and over in his mind, examining the position of the dogs, their size, estimating how fast they could move. Not unlike the Lion he had once been, he sized them up, analyzing the best way to kill each. By the time the lead wolf overcame its trepidation and lunged for him, he was ready to act.

            He side-stepped the first wolf and aimed his hand at the one furthest away, throwing the spell. _Die, _he thought. The target died. He whirled on the lead, "decoy" wolf before it had a chance to turn around from its lunge. It, too, died without so much as a whisper. 

            In turning, he'd put his back in the path of the last wolf, ready to let it pass through him and smite it from behind once it had. The demiwolf leaped. It crashed into him head-on. It knocked him over. They both went down in a tangle of startled limbs, paws and hands. To his shock, Squall felt the beast's jaws close on his left arm, felt the teeth penetrate and felt _pain _follow. 

_I'm not dead!_

As the snarling wolf gnawed his arm, its fangs cut into his soul, shredding the fibers of his spirit as easily as they would have flesh. More stunned than injured, Squall froze, his arm holding his attacker at bay, staring dumbfounded into the beast's triumphant purple eyes.

_Not...what am I?_

            Then that wolf, too, fell dead, its jaws going slack and releasing Squall's arm as its soulless body slumped to the floor and melted away into a puddle of fading darkness. 

            Petrified with shock, his torn arm still held out in front of him, Squall jerkily turned too look up over his shoulder at Rinoa, who sat on her cot, her finger pointed to the place where the wolf had once been. A deep and trembling sadness cowered in the deep dark of her gaze. 

            _I'm sorry I took so long to answer._

            Nida's voice over the intercom interrupted any further conversation.

            [All odd-numbered SeeDs report to level two! Blockade section six, primary education area. And hot-foot it, people, the power's out in there! Sheena, we need you up here, stat!]

            Rinoa's eyes widened. "Section six…Simone's daycare is in section six."

            Squall was staring at the inside corner of his jacket collar, where his identification number was printed in a clear, serif typeface: **Student ID 41269.**

Odd-numbered SeeDs.

"I've gotta get up there," he murmured tonelessly. 

Rinoa was already on her feet, pushing away concerned medics without even looking at them, ignoring their confused questions about who she was talking to and demands that she should lay back down until she recovered. The people did not exist to her. At the moment, Squall was the only living being in the room, and she mentally beckoned to him. "I have to find Simon," she said. "We're going to need him."

Clutching his injured arm, not bothering to look at the wound to see if it bled, Squall followed her, passing through people and beds without thought or care, and the lack of opposition allowed him to catch up with her at the door. "Simon's hurt," he informed her simply, without feeling, as if he were telling her bricks were hard. He could not feel anything right now. There was too much to feel, too much to say, and there was no time to feel or say any of it. "He's in the back room. He got bitten by one of those things—"

"Demiwolves," Rinoa told him. "Ultimecia's minions."

"Yeah, I know."

Rinoa spared a very brief glance at him before she opened the door to the "vet room," as it was labeled. Having already anticipated Rinoa's arrival, Simon limped out the door the moment it was opened, his injured foot wrapped in a blue-taped bandage. Sneering, annoyed no one had taken the time to heal her dog, Rinoa stooped beside him and hurriedly pulled the wrap off. "Simon can take them as long as I help him," she muttered nervously as she dared to waste time and magic in healing her furry partner's bloody paw. 

"How can they see me?" Squall asked, eyeing the gathering semicircle of SeeDs and medics around them. They all watched Rinoa silently, but seemed unwilling—afraid—to come any closer or say so much as a word to her.

"I don't know," she answered, unfazed by the audience. "They've never paid attention to you before."

_Probably part of the bargain, _Squall groused darkly to himself.

"What?" Rinoa looked quizzically up at him when she was done with Simon's paw, her eyebrows knit in a frown.

"Nothing," he lied. "I'll tell you later, if there is one. Let's get out of here."

Rinoa was in no position to object. In answer, she blinked. Before the bewildered eyes of the medical crew, She and her dog and the invisible person she'd been conversing with vanished from the infirmary. 

            *

            Daedalus' regiment was ready to strike when the lights went out. 

            They surged forward out of the stairwell the instant after the darkness fell. A wall of SeeDs stood ready to meet them, but their human eyes had been momentarily blinded by the sudden lack of light. Daedalus made the best of this advantage, slamming headlong into the first SeeD, knocking her backward several feet into a formation of her squad mates, two of which fell with her, cascading to the floor like bowling pins. The rest of the wolves struck with similarly deadly efficiency, toppling as many of the enemy as possible to the ground where they could be easily dealt with. Wasting no time, Daedalus pinned his first victim to the floor and bit into her throat, choking off her last shout—an order. 

"Fire!" 

Magical fire exploded in the hallway, all around, blinding, dangerous. Daedalus closed his eyes to the painful glare and maneuvered by sound and scent alone, grabbing unprotected arms or hands in his steel-trap jaws and dragging SeeD after SeeD to the floor to slaughter. He took a few hits from their magic, but he was a strong wolf and he weathered the pain and singed fur, pushing inexorably toward his singular goal: a closed door at the end of the hall. He slipped through their weapons without a scratch, disappearing into the deep shadows beyond the edges of the glow cast by the emergency lighting. He was soon joined by four of his brethren while the rest of the pack kept the SeeDs busy. War was all around them; a wolf yelped and fell burning to the floor just feet away. Daedalus ignored the whimpering of the dying creature and turned his attention to the big wolf he'd spoken to earlier. _Keep to the walls as I do, and try not to be seen. If I am spotted, kill anyone who tries to get near me. _

The big wolf pricked his ears in acknowledgment.

Guardedly, Daedalus slunk along the wall, toward the door. He could only remain unseen when he was in shadow. The shadows near the door were thin and he could not keep his entire body within them, and the flaring of magic all around threatened to expose him should someone look in his direction at just the right moment. He came to a halt at the end of the shadow. There was a ray of emergency lighting between where he stood and the door. 

He tilted his nose up to the light. His violet eyes flashed. With a loud pop, the light blew out, the bulb exploding as the box that contained it was crushed under the pressure of Daedalus' magic. Shadow encompassed the door. Every nearby SeeD turned at the sound, and hurried to get to it before the wolves did, some at the cost of their lives. Daedalus was already there, his guards surrounding him, shielding him. He focused on the door, crouched before it as if ready to catch a bone it might throw. His eyes, burning alien and wide, took in the door's shape. In his mind, he saw great jaws close upon the unseen edges of the door and crush down. With a heavy groan, the door began to warp, stress lines streaking the metal. It was a heavy, armored door. In any other time or place, this would have seemed an odd feature for a daycare center.

Daedalus heard shouts and cries further down the hallway, and felt elation swell in his heart as his moment of triumph neared. His reinforcements had arrived. The SeeDs were now surrounded. Where there had been twenty-some demiwolves, now there were nearly fifty. A second ring of guardian wolves joined the first four in protecting him.

One final magical _shove, _and the doorway crumpled under Daedalus' grip, metal screeching in protest as it was folded double and yanked out of its frame. The door fell inward onto the floor of the lightless room beyond, and Daedalus rushed in, bounding up on top of the twisted lump of metal. His four companions followed him, fanning out at his sides as the rest of the pack kept the SeeDs away from their own door. 

Daedalus' ears pricked, his head raised as his eyes scoured the room. The hair of his scruff bristled. 

_Leader, _came the voice of the big wolf, _no one is here. _

Daedalus growled plaintively, taking a step forward, sniffing the air. _They are here, _he insisted firmly. _We simply cannot see them. They are hiding. Quickly, spread out. We must find her before—_

"NOW!" cried a muffled female voice. 

All at once, five child-sized doors opened in the smilie-faced tree trunks painted on the brightly-colored walls. Half a dozen gleefully grinning young faces poked out of each door. A flurry of clicks followed the creaking of the doors.

Light. Terrible, piercing lances of bright, white light shot from the hands of the children, who raised their voices to a shrill wail, each doing his or her absolute best "ghost" impression.

_"WooOooOooOooOooOooOooOoo!"_

Some of them waved high-powered flashlights around, creating a confusing strobe effect, giving the wolves no permanent shadows in which to hide from the painful glare. The others wielded portable floodlights which they kept trained squarely on the dogs, who blanched and whined, closing their eyes and flattening their ears against the hideous glare and noise. 

The sound and the light distracted the guard wolves outside the door. For a moment, some of them forgot their position, and fell to a well-aimed spell thrown from SeeD hands. One of Daedalus' four partners yelped and backed out of the room, its hairless tail tucked between its legs, and bumped into one of the door-sentries, startling both and resulting in their deaths; they were suddenly dragged away from the door. Sounds of vicious snarling could be heard, as though they fought. But neither wolf returned from the scuffle. The silhouette that appeared in their place did not belong to a wolf at all. 

Daedalus and his remaining three chosen turned to face a red-eyed dog that was nearly as big as Daedalus himself. 

"It's _Simon!_" A little girl's voice cried from one of the tree trunk doors. "He's come ta help us!"

Other small voices echoed the sentiment.

"Go Simon!"

"Get 'em Simon!"

"Beat up the bad dogs!"

"Sic 'em!"

Simon sicced 'em. 

He rushed into the light, which reflected sheer and cold off the edges of pure, ice-white fur, lit up burning red, pupil-less eyes and shined off silver-white fangs. The children did not think his transformation strange. They had seen it before. They knew what he could do when he turned white. 

Still crazed and half-blinded from the light, two of Daedalus' guardians rushed the oncoming dog, howling their gravity spells, and he moved in to meet their challenge. Their dark magic diffused over Simon's fur like water splattering against a brick wall. He burst from the dissipating darkness and hit the ground running, striking the first wolf low and making short work of it. The second did not last much longer against his slashing silver teeth. 

The big wolf by Daedalus' side faced Simon with his leader. Daedalus, while pained by the light, had no intention of backing down, not when he was so close to his goal. He whispered a spell, encasing both himself and his loyal guardian in a shield of green—just in time for some SeeD who had managed to escape the fray in the hall to toss a ball of flame at him—a spell that was reflected directly back at its caster. Daedalus had the satisfaction of hearing the fool scream as he was seared by his own attack. 

White moved first. Simon struck at the black wolf, who dodged him deftly, his partner attempting to get behind the white shepherd dog as Daedalus backed off and tried to lure him toward one corner of the room where the flashlights seemed to be having trouble reaching. Sandwiched between the two big wolves, Simon snapped at the hairless one that harried him, trying to get in a quick kill; anything less would give Daedalus the opportunity to attack. 

He got his chance. The hairless one made a lunge too soon, and Simon was on him, had snapped the creature's neck in a matter of seconds, and was still able to turn and face Daedalus before the still-living demiwolf could make a lunge for him. 

Daedalus was not there. He was already halfway across the room, arrowing for one of the tree trunk doors, heedless of the light that burned his eyes. Simon rushed to catch him. The children in the trees began to scream. Daedalus' attack snarl carried above their cries.

He slammed into a wall of solid blue energy. 

One of the children's' caretakers, a woman in SeeD uniform, reached out an arm and pulled her half-dozen charges a few inches back from the door's opening as Daedalus, stunned and dazed from impacting the protective barrier, staggered to his feet, turning just in time to meet Simon head-on. 

The two were an even match. A tempest of fur and fangs, the white shepherd dog and the black wolf tore at each other furiously, each landing blows but neither suffering from them; both combatants' wounds healed instantly upon being inflicted. Light versus shadow, they tumbled and wrestled through the beams of white and black, neither gaining or losing any ground. Simon's burning red eyes and Daedalus' of eerie violet left trails of afterimage in the air as the two spun and grappled. 

The distant rumble of a giant engine starting up vibrated through the walls. There were cheers from the trees; the bright ceiling lights cascaded to life as power to section six was restored. 

Daedalus closed his glowing eyes, unable to stand the glare any longer. He struggled to keep up with his adversary without having to see him. He wondered where the rest of his pack was and why they weren't helping him. Upon these doubts, he began to feel pain; his would were no longer closing. He heard footsteps, human footsteps, come through the doorway and start to run across the room—

The floor dropped out underneath him. Blessed darkness closed around him, and the world vanished. An edged voice, iced with disappointment, buzzed terrifyingly in his ears.

_You have failed. Playtime is over. Kome home, Daedalus._

Then he was falling through the atmosphere.

                                    Falling…

                                                                                    Falling…

                                                                                                            Falling…

Burning.

*

When Daedalus disappeared, so, too, did all the demiwolves, as well as the creepdrakes and Geoleviathan. It was as though they'd been mirages, nothing more than terrible figments of the imagination, nightmares come to haunt the land of the wakeful. 

Nightmares that killed. 

Squall looked about at the carnage in the hallway. Dead and dying SeeDs—as well as some who were not SeeDs—lay strewn about the corridor. The floor, balustrade and walls were spray-painted with blood, accented with scorch marks. A doomed youth leaned against the wall in the corner, one hand trying desperately to keep his own guts from spilling onto the floor, the other clutched tightly in the comforting grasp of a trembling comrade who refused to allow his friend to die alone. 

            _When he does, _Squall thought, remembering Rinoa's words, _Ultimecia will steal his soul and use it to fuel her power._ He watched with an empty heart as the youth's eyes glazed and closed forever. He wondered what it would be like to die believing that the only life, the only existence after death would be hell. He supposed he should know. 

            He remembered a time he hadn't believed in an afterlife. He still didn't, not really. His perspective on the matter had simply changed, but his philosophy remained the same: The End meant the end. Then it was over. There was nothing after the end. That's what "The End" meant. What was questionable was whether or not there really was an end at all.

Standing in the gore bedecked hallway, amidst shattered lives and broken dreams, Squall was beginning to think that dying was a choice, rather than a fate. Though he did not breathe and could not touch, he was still here. He was here, standing beside Rinoa, staring into a ransacked daycare center as Simone escaped her caretakers and ran to hug her dog. He was here—feeling—because he'd chosen to be. The other Squall would have felt nothing at the image he witnessed. He wouldn't have felt sadness. He wouldn't have felt hope. He'd given up. He was dead. 

Squall had once loathed the version of himself that had once haunted this reality. Now, he was beginning to understand what had driven him to his doom. What he couldn't understand, was why. 

_If I defied Ultimecia, why didn't he? Am I just kidding myself? I've only been here a day. Am I just as doomed?_

Bleakly, he looked on as Rinoa hurried through the doorway and plucked Simone up, hugging her desperately, smudging soot on the little girl's face in the process. Simon was gradually shrinking, reverting to his normal coloration as Rinoa's magic wore off. He nosed Simone's feet, but she was too busy protesting getting her soot-stained face cleaned by her mother's nervous fingers. Squall thought it odd at first, that she did not cry, so close had she come to losing her child to the fangs of Ultimecia's demons. But then, why should she, he reasoned. She faced that danger every day. Stranger, then, that he, a SeeD who was used to the risk that came with facing mortal danger on a regular basis, thought he felt his throat tighten. If his body had been living, he imagined he would have been forced to look away to hide his eyes. Instead he was allowed to watch Rinoa reunite with Simone without fear of soul-betraying tears. He wasn't certain if this privilege was a privilege at all, or this reality's idea of a sick joke. 

His face tilted in a bitter smirk. If his life as the Lion of the alleys had been a tragedy, it was not inconceivable that this could be a sort of divine comedy.

Squall dared to step into the room then, leaving the bloody hallway as a small army of medics and some helpful trainees rushed in to assist the wounded and count the dead. He stepped slowly over to the center of the room to stand behind Simon—who was being showered with affection by a number of grateful children—as Nida's voice announced over the intercom that all was clear; the enemy had vanished. Wherever they had gone, it appeared that, for the moment, they were not coming back. Of course, no one was to assume as much. SeeDs stayed at their posts. So Squall stood at his, in the middle of a room that was quickly filling with children and soldiers. It occurred to him that most of the children were probably orphans, thanks to Ultimecia's reign of terror. Amidst the strange collection of people, he stood with Rinoa, Simone, and a dog, not quite the nuclear family, but probably the closest thing this shattered world had left. 

He looked at Simone, but his words were directed at her mother. "She all right?" He asked tonelessly. 

Rinoa nodded, almost imperceptibly. _She's fine…thanks to you._

Squall raised an eyebrow at this, but decided after a moment that she was right; if he had not interfered with the demiwolves, they would have killed Rinoa, and if she had died, Simone would likely be dead, as well. Or worse…

He remembered, suddenly, his arm, and took a moment to look at it as the SeeD who had been protecting the daycare emerged from the tree trunk door and came to speak with Rinoa and gather the children away from Simon, who was interested only in his family and doing his best to ignore the backward petting of small hands. Ignoring them all, Squall squinted at the torn leather of his jacket and the ragged rip in his unliving flesh beneath. The wound bled; not blood, but a flame-like energy that rose up and tapered off like liquid smoke. Squall watched in morbid fascination as thin tatters of his spirit, ember red and amber, drifted off into nothingness as if blown away by a gentle breeze. He sighed and let his arm down just as Rinoa, having finished her conversation with the SeeD, saw him. Her eyes widened when she caught sight of the glowing injury. _Squall, your arm—!_

Squall waved her concern away with his good arm, glancing around the room. "It'll heal. If you wanna talk, we'd better find another place to do it. Once the excitement dies down, people are gonna start noticing."

Wanting to protest the downplaying of his wound, Rinoa nevertheless thought better of it, and shifted Simone's weight in her arms as she tried to think of a suitable place to talk. She knew by the darkness in the windows that it was night out. She knew by the bodies outside and the demiwolves she and Squall had to fight through to reach the daycare—had to, because she was still exhausted and her transport spell had been slightly off—that it had been Ultimecia's dark magic which had overwhelmed her. She knew by Squall's strange, distant expression and attitude that there was something urgent on his mind, but each time she tried to read him, his thoughts were so jumbled she could not sort them out enough to make any sense of them. She did not know why she had soot on her face, arms and clothes, or even how she had gotten to the infirmary to begin with. One moment she'd been standing in the middle of the aviary. The next…

"Mom-my," Simone was hailing her impatiently. "Kin I get down now?" Apparently convinced that there was no more danger, she'd tired of clinging to her mother, and was now enviously eyeing a group of children playing a ball game under the watchful eye of two towering SeeDs. 

Rinoa reluctantly put Simone down. "Stay with Simon," she told her firmly. "Understand?" 

Simone nodded emphatically, grinning. "I stay with 'im." She pet the big dog with a small, awkward hand. 

Tapping Simon on the head to get his attention, Rinoa pointed to the corner game. "Keep Simone," she commanded. "Stay." She and Squall both watched as the dog obediently herded Simone in the indicated direction. Rinoa made sure the overseeing SeeDs had seen the two before she dared to drag her eyes away. Even when she did, Squall noted it was only with profound effort. He followed her as she reluctantly started backing away toward the exit. _I'm sorry,_ she offered when she saw him staring at her. _I just…every time I leave her here, I wonder if it will be the last time…_ Then, resolutely, she made herself turn her back and walk in a straight line for the ravaged door, stepping around the cleanup crew who were busy moving the metal lump out of the way. 

Squall followed her, reserving any answer until he knew where he was going. So much to say, no time—no place—to say it. He had to tell her about Simone. He had to warn her—

A thunderous _bang _echoed through the hallway the moment the two exited the daycare. 

Instantly every living body in the vicinity took up battle positions, SeeDs blockading the door, others lining the walls and facing the source of the noise as it repeated, twice, again. It came from somewhere far down the hallway, Squall guessed from the level of reverberation. It was a hollow sound, too, as if someone had shot a round into a large metal tube. 

He glanced at Rinoa, wondering if she planned on investigating the noise. She felt his curiosity and silently urged him to wait. He had no objection. He waited, staring down the empty corridor, prepared to scan any terrible beast that might come thundering toward them; he wanted to get a good look at one of Ultimecia's minions, see what they were made of. Maybe there was some advantage over them he could offer that everyone else had missed…

The noise sounded again, and again, and then what sounded like the squeak and screech of metal and rubber scraping against each other.

Squall scowled. He knew that sound. He'd heard it before. "Someone's forcing the elevator doors open," he said. He exchanged glances with Rinoa as shouts erupted down the hall. He was able to make out orders to hold fire, calls for a medic, and a name.

"Commander Dane!"

Squall started to say something to Rinoa, but the sorceress vanished before he could utter a word. 

* 

Balamb Garden was a large campus. It took almost two minutes for Squall to run half the circumference of the second floor.

He came upon the elevator walkway to find a small army of people blocking the path, huddled around something on the floor in front of the elevator doors. Squall passed through them because no one could stop him, knowing that Rinoa was in the center of the crowd, knowing also that Commander Dane was, as well. 

Or at least, what was left of him. The man lay on the floor in a widening pool of blood, sprawled half-out, half-in the elevator doorway, which appeared to have been blasted open by some high-level spell. There was no car beyond the open door. It appeared Dane had climbed down the shaft, forced the doors, and, judging from the trail, dragged himself out onto the floor. 

Dane was covered in slash wounds of every length and depth, each keen and straight as a paper-cut. It looked as if someone had taken a fine razor to the upper half of his body, strategically dissecting him to see what he looked like from the inside out. That someone had taken great care to keep him alive, too; no major arteries had been severed, no vital organs had been harmed. But they were all exposed for the world to see, the white of bone contrasting grotesquely with living red. 

"I'm sorry," one of the SeeD medics was saying to Rinoa. "We've tried every spell he have, and nothing works. There was no way we could have known. They knocked out the elevator in that last wave—"

"_Shut up!"_

The woman quieted at the sorceress' enraged command. Everyone obeyed it. No one said a word, not even Squall. Slowly, he knelt on the other side of Dane's tortured body, lifting his eyes from the terrible sight to Rinoa. 

She held her hands inches above Dane's ravaged body, unwilling to touch him but unable to stand away and watch him die. "He climbed down here," she murmured in a trembling voice, to Squall or to herself, "like this. Climbed half a level and then blew the door open…" She bit her lip as the commander drew a ragged breath, placed shaking fingertips on a wound on his arm, a wound that mirrored the placement of Squall's. 

Squall followed the path of her hand, startled. Dane's blood was taking on an odd, orange-ish color; Squall could not force back a wince at the realization that something—a venom of some kind, perhaps—was causing the cells to separate from the plasma. 

_I can't help him,_ came Rinoa's voice in Squall's mind._ The poison is too fast. I used up the last of my power bringing myself here. I couldn't even take you. I have nothing left, and Dane's going to die…because I was too weak. _She began to shake uncontrollably, her eyes looking past the dying SeeD before her. _Squall, I'm so tired, and used up. I can't even save my best friend. How am I supposed to save the world?_

"Best friend?" Squall's expression was blank. "Dane?"

His tone goaded her into looking at him despite the spectators. _Yes… _Gingerly, afraid of causing Dane more pain, she slipped her fingers around the commander's tattered hand. 

Squall had disliked Dane because of his interest in Rinoa. It hadn't occurred to him that she might be friends with the man. He'd almost laughed at the idea of Dane getting eaten alive by rexaurs. Somehow, the reality of his death wasn't half as appealing to Squall as the dream. Another dream become nightmare. He had a sudden, unwelcome flashback of the SeeD youth dying in the corner, and was vividly reminded of what servitude Rinoa had said awaited all the departed spirits of the world.

_They're gone,_ he thought. _I'm still here…_ He blinked once, slowly, capturing Rinoa's attention. _I'm not…not dead._

Slowly, Squall held out his injured arm, over Dane, toward Rinoa, in offering. She looked at it for a moment, uncomprehending, then met his unwavering stare with her own. Her eyes questioned him. 

He answered with a nod. "You'll be strong enough," he said. He did not move another inch. He offered his strength to her, to accept or deny. _I lost a best friend, once…_

She reached out and grasped at thin air. Her hand closed around solid energy. Squall's ethereal blood curled between her fingers, gripping her as if by its own accord, then vanishing into her. 

The connection opened; Squall felt himself, his thoughts, pulled away from him, siphoned off with his blood. His vision blurred, and in another moment he saw only darkness, drifting color, and fell into the warm incoherence of dreamless sleep. The colors embraced him, and she was the only thing he knew. 

_I thought I had,_ too, a soft voice whispered to his heart, _but maybe I was wrong._


End file.
